On June 19th, if you were driving down Route 153 by Province Lake around 1 o’clock, you may have seen about a dozen people standing on the border between Maine and New Hampshire. At first glance, with the weather being so lovely, these folks could have been early summer visitors enjoying the day on the Province Lake beach. If you drive closer, you would see several wearing fluorescent yellow/orange vests and everyone standing in a circle. It turns out, this was a meeting between a whole swatch of organizations gearing up to discuss the Province Lake Management Plan and what, if anything, could be done along the 153 stretch of Province beach.
The meeting was an acronym soup of organizations and marked a meeting between all the people involved from multiple states! Standing on the state line to discuss potential fixes to Route 153 were, in no specific order, representatives from:
The Province Lake Association
NH Department of Environmental Services
ME Department of Environmental Protection
Acton Wakefield Watersheds Alliance
ME DOT
NH DOT
FB Environmental
UNH Stormwater Center
The meeting went on for over an hour and half and a lot of good information was shared from starting points, to design ideas, to how things should be approached to get work done with everyone’s schedule and crossing state lines. A definite “step in the right direction” to help improve and maintain the water quality of the lake.