TOWN OF MANLIUS — At its Jan. 21 meeting at Manlius Town Hall, the Town of Manlius Watershed Stewards welcomed Cazenovia Town Supervisor Kyle Reger to present about watershed data collection and protection strategies.
Reger started by bringing up the Cazenovia Lake Watershed Council (CLWC) comprising two Village of Cazenovia trustees, two members of the Cazenovia Town Board and two people from the Cazenovia Lake Association.
With that, Cazenovia has what Reger called a well-developed watershed protection plan with “copious participation” from people within the community willing to step up and lend their help or expertise regardless of the particular project at hand.
That has included representatives from the Cazenovia Central School District, Cazenovia College before it closed, other higher education institutions like SUNY Morrisville and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and the Cazenovia Area Community Development Association, which is a cross section of different organizations in the general area, including ones from the town of Nelson, Reger said.
Adding that he’s grateful for the work the Town of Manlius Watershed Stewards group has done and for the ability to come together with neighboring municipalities facing similar issues for the common cause of protecting natural features, Reger said it’s fundamental to the success of any endeavor to have communication among multiple organizations and to expand engagement with the greater public to get as much feedback as possible.
Reger said work over the years has included examining the details of Cazenovia Lake for future reference, working with the entire lake association to ward away invasive species, and monitoring stormwater runoff and significant sediment movement.
“When we get these major rain events, all of a sudden there can be this huge backwash where instead of the water running out, it’s coming back in,” Reger said. “It puts all this phosphorus and different elements back in the lake and starts changing the chemistry of the lake.”
Bob Ridler, the chairman of the Town of Cazenovia Planning Board, spoke at last week’s meeting at the Brooklea Drive town hall as well.
Ridler said the town monitors sections around the Chittenango Creek tributary and everywhere else to make sure chemicals from septic systems and lawn treatments are controlled.
He said development going in around the lake has to abide by guidelines related to non-disturbance of the lake, such as allowances to build within certain distances of the lakeshore.
There’s also the Cazenovia Area Conservation Committee, a group of volunteers with specialized scientific and environmental knowledge when it comes to community governance that sits in on the town’s development application hearings and reviews.
Ridler said riparian corridors have been established and defined in Cazenovia’s town code and are treated the same way as the designated Critical Environmental Areas around its lake, marked as the first 20 feet of lakeshore.
During the evening meeting, Reger said the educational and protective efforts over time all go back to taking care of the lake and bettering its health, which in turn is in the interest of the community when it has to do with public safety or the affecting of property values of surrounding homes if the lake’s water quality ever deteriorated.
Don Gates, a member of the Manlius Watershed Stewards, said his citizens committee can help and has helped the Manlius Town Board function and learn from their residents.
Gates said that in the vein of what the CLWC has done, he’d like to see the local watershed stewards group collaborate more with other similar-minded area organizations like Sustainable Manlius, the town’s tree commission, Climate Change Awareness and Action, and Trout Unlimited.
The Town of Manlius Watershed Stewards focus on fostering watershed resilience through means such as erosion control, flood mitigation and pollution reduction. The group meets once a month.
Limestone Creek and its tributaries form the primary watershed in the town of Manlius, but the town also contains part of the Butternut Creek and Chittenango Creek watersheds, with all three part of the larger Oneida Lake watershed.
