Thanks to a power outage on Friday night, the Annual GLPA Membership meeting was held in the dark at the Gun Lake Chapel on Saturday morning. Actually, the Chapel has huge windows all around, so it was remarkably bright and cheery; but for my, um, “senior” eyes that needed to read my notes, it was plenty dark….LOL! A huge thank you! to all who attended and support the GLPA so wonderfully – I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who had to free my garage door from the electric opener so I could attend the meeting.
Andru Jevicks, Park Manager for Yankee Springs State Park, was one of our guest speakers, and he mentioned that earlier this summer, about 150 geese had been captured and relocated; caught either in the park, or in neighborhoods that had requested the DNR’s assistance. This is awesome news, speaking as the person who tests the water around the lake – this probably explains the complete lack of e-coli in 14 of the 16 locations we tested the first week of August!! For the 2 locations that registered e-coli, the count was still way in the “safe” zone. Even the Cuddy had safe e-coli levels!! There is an irrefutable connection between waterfowl and e-coli: if you have neighbors who like to feed the geese and ducks (which encourages them to hang around), please remind them that they are “fowl fouling” (pun intended) the water. E-coli lives in the intestines of ALL warmblooded creatures; and that would include birds.
Watch for a bunch of us doing the “Cuddy Check” Monday night August 15th, starting at 5:30 PM. Dan Fredricks, project engineer; and a representative from the dredging contractor, will be cruising the Cuddy Channel. They will be looking for potential obstacles to a successful channel dredging, like boat lifts, docks, etc. Notes will be made, and if the property owners are not on hand, I think an explanatory letter will be left at the home. Pat Gillespie, Greg Purcell, myself, and several others will be tagging along. I’m not sure if we’re starting at the upstream or downstream end of the channel? Cuddy residents should have received an informational letter in the mail by Saturday 8/13/16.
PATTERSON BRIDGE CLOSING: In that letter, a tentative date of September 12th was mentioned as a construction-start date. The idea was to wait a week after Labor Day, for those companies that offer boat-storage and winterizing services, to get their clients’ boats out and not have to detour. The bridge reconstruction and channel dredging will run concurrently; dredging will probably start at the downstream end of the Cuddy Channel; by the time it reaches Patterson, the bridgework should be done.
Friends of the Cuddy Drain 