A draining experience

Vernon - Lake Wanda is ebbing fast. The beaver stands alone at the door of his home, fending off the geese that want to invade the ten-foot tall lodge, which has been a fixture on one of the lake’s fingers ever since anyone can remember. The swans and the geese are squabbling about who has the right to occupy the ever-diminishing expanse of open water. Painted and snapping turtles are crawling away across lakeside lawns. Perch and sunfish are flopping about in muddy pools or futilely trying to swim out across the weedy silt lake bottom. Boats that a few days ago floated beside docks now lie aground on the mud flats. What’s more, some residents are complaining that they are losing water pressure and that their wells seem to be spitting and gurgling. They wonder whether the well problems are being caused by the nearly one and a half million gallons of lake water that’s pouring out of the lake and into the skunk-cabbage filled swamp below the dam. “It is only a matter of time until the bears and vultures start feasting on all of the dead and dying fish and the disease-bearing mosquitoes start feasting on us,” said Kathleen Agnelli, who has functioned for the past several years as president of the lake association. How did this ecological calamity come about? About a week and a half ago the courts ordered the lake drained. Officials from the N. J. Department of Environmental Protection feared that the dam, weakened by many years of neglect, inevitably would fail and flood Lake Wawayanda with a sudden influx of water of dubious purity. Department officials have been trying to get the owner to repair or replace the old dam for the past 20 years. Township manager Don Teolis said that state officials wanted to push through the order to drain the lake at least five years ago, but Vernon officials entreated them to hold back to give the lake owner and lake association members time to reach an agreement. “The lake owner had three choices: Fix the dam, sell the lake and let others fix the dam, or drain the lake,” said John Moyle, the manager of the N.J. Bureau of Dam Safety and Flood Control in an interview early last week. “The dam owner won’t fix the dam, and he won’t sell the lake. We took him to court because we judged the dam to be unsafe.” The department has classified the lake as a third-tier hazard, its second lowest ranking. The lake is owned by the estate of Karl Schwarz and his widow, Grace. The couple bought the lake in the early 1970s. For many years, their son, Dennis Schwarz, has been managing the property for his mother, who is nearly 90 years old. “I was spending between $5,000 and $10,000 a year just to destroy the water weeds and few people seem to want to pay their association dues. I didn’t want to play policeman and knock on the doors to demand money,” Schwarz said. He added that he lacked the funds to pay for repairing and replacing the dam while only a scant 20 of 393 homeowners paid him the yearly $300 in lake-association dues. The money residents paid wasn’t even enough to cover the approximately $25,000 in annual property taxes on the lake, and so Schwarz said he stopped paying his taxes in 2002. That same year, a small group of residents tried to raise funds to buy the lake from Schwarz. A number of property owners wanted no part of the association because they didn’t use the lake and felt they shouldn’t be responsible for paying for work on property they didn’t own. Unlike other lake communities in Vernon, property owners in the Lake Wanda community were required neither to pay dues nor join an association. Those who have tried to organize the association over the years have not been able to convince residents whose homes are not on the lake itself to join and pay dues. If there had been a viable association, the town would have been able to back a low-interest loan from the state to repair the dam. Negotiations between the owner and the lake association progressed in fits and starts, stalled for months, and then fell apart completely. For the past several years the two sides have been facing off like affronted cats. Distraught residents met last Saturday evening at Our Lady of Fatima R. C. Church to try to thrash out some means to save the rapidly draining lake. Vernon Mayor Janet Morrison enjoined the residents and the lake’s owner to come to terms on a sale, and she urged residents to come together to form a viable lake association. On Monday evening, Schwarz and worried residents laid their problem before the mayor and council. Agnelli said that the residents hope the council will help them save their community and lake. “The state has approved the $392,000 loan on the basis of engineering reports on the dam. The problem is, we aren’t the owners of the property. In August 2002, we first learned of the problem. Four years later we still don’t own the property. We have been trying all this time. If we owned the property we could get grants to help lower the loan amount, too,” Agnelli said. Angrick and other residents said the dam is far stronger than it appears because a concrete core bolsters it. In 2004, the Vernon officials had agreed to co-sign the application for a low-interest state loan to repair the dam provided a viable lake association pledged to repay the debt. But the association members drew insufficient support from residents to proceed. The mayor and council sympathized with the residents but told them in no uncertain terms that the township could not buy the lake and fix the dam because it would be unjust to pass on the cost of repairing the dam to other Vernon taxpayers. If the lake association is able to buy the lake and its associated property, the township will assess all property owners in the community about $100 to $125 a year to repay the cost of repairing dam. In addition, association members would pay about $340 a year in membership dues. By contrast, Highland Lakes homeowners pay an initial fee of $1,000, plus a $60 yearly dam assessment fee and $900 in annual membership dues. Later in the evening Agnelli told The Advertiser-News that she and Schwarz had talked at length, and once again had shaken hands on a deal for the association to purchase the lake and some other properties surrounding it. “Hopefully, this time we’ll be able to get a contract signed, sealed and delivered by all of the necessary parties - but first we need to stop the fish harvest,” Agnelli said. Department of Environmental Protection officials said they wanted the game fish to be rescued and transferred to a new home in Lake Wawayanda. But resident fishing maven Jay Angrick said he fears that the lake level is too low and the weeds are too thick for Allied Biological to be able to salvage many fish. The department based its order to drain the lake by seven feet on the belief that the lake was about 20 feet deep, whereas it is only some nine feet at its deepest. Today, the lake is down by four feet. “If we don’t close the dam now, we’re going to have 55,000 pounds of fish dying in the mud, and it’s going to stink to high heaven,” Angrick said. “We have to stop the carnage before it gets worse and we look out and see flocks of vultures feeding on the dead fish and birds. The good Lord sent the rain, which has bought us a few days by filling the lake up again. Councilman Austin Carew said that it would be a shame and an embarrassment to the community to let a lake drain when the chances of building a new lake are nil. Township Manager said that he would ask township engineer Lou Kniep to look into the possible association of well problems with the sinking lake level, and Director of Health Gene Osias to study the health and safety risk associated with dead and dying animals and possibly entrapping and unhealthful lake bottom muck.