2023 Holiday Issue

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Community Turns Out for Lake Cleanup 22 Story by MICHAEL DAIGLE Photos by KAREN FUCITO This is a story about stuff. Comedian George Carlin famously did an entire routine about stuff and how emotionally attached to it we are. But we’re not talking that stuff. This is about the stuff that floats on the surface of Lake Hopatcong and rivers and streams, gets lost or tossed from a passing boat, or falls from a dock or slips through fingers and gets carried in a current. Stuff that gets buried in the shoreline weeds and mud. Stuff that doesn’t decompose. Stuff like hundreds of tires, deflated balloons, bottles made of glass, metal or plastic, plastic bags, toys, shoes and cigarettes. Stuff like the single pink Croc left on the sand at the Mount Arlington Public Beach. This is also a story about the hundreds of volunteers who clean up that stuff. On Saturday, November 4, they were at it again, at 50 spots around Lake Hopatcong armed with gloves and bags and boots and good spirits hauling out of the lake all the stuff left behind. Since 2013, the Lake Hopatcong Commission and the Lake Hopatcong Foundation have organized with myriad partners a lake-wide cleanup timed to the 60-inch drawdown of the lake that occurs every five years. This year the commission and foundation were joined by the Morris and Sussex Counties’ Clean Communities; the four towns around the lake (Hopatcong, Jefferson, Mount Arlington and Roxbury); New Jersey State Police; Morris County Sheriff’s Office; Morris County Division of Mosquito Control; Hopatcong State Park and the Morris County Park Commission. Also on hand was Kati Angarone, the assistant New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection commissioner for watershed and land use management, who joined the hearty bunch of cleaners at Mount Arlington Beach. “This is a good measure of the community’s LAKE HOPATCONG NEWS <strong>Holiday</strong> <strong>2023</strong> involvement,” she said, “and provides the department with important information about the health of the lake.” Management of Lake Hopatcong’s depth began in 1932 with a 30-inch annual drop, including a water level drop to a depth of 60 inches every five years, according to the 2011 Lake Hopatcong Water Level Management Plan. The lake is considered full at 9 feet, measured at the dam in Landing. The drawdown is designed to allow repairs to waterside structures and to help flush from the lake the nutrients that feed weed growth. In 2016, the water level management plan was changed to allow a 22-inch annual drawdown, from 26 inches. The lake reached a water level of 5 feet at the dam on November 1, according to the foundation. The lake will remain at this level until December 15, when refill will begin and continue until the annual 22-inch drawdown level is reached or until ice forms. Without water, the lake offers a view of skeletal wooden docks; hundreds of feet of exposed, muddy shoreline; rivulets of streams carving the muck; and overgrown estuaries sometimes home to trapped debris. It was in one of the hidden estuaries at Hopatcong’s Roland-May Eves Mountain Inlet Sanctuary, where Hopatcong resident and entrepreneur Olivier Hoyer was presented with one of his Billie Cove T-shirts still wrapped in a biodegradable plastic bag. The shirt had been pulled from the water’s edge by a volunteer. “That’s my clothing brand,” Hoyer exclaimed. “It’s crazy.” The shirt was no worse for wear, just soaking wet. The irony did not escape him: He had donated shirts for a cleanup day raffle held later that day at the Lake Hopatcong Foundation’s headquarters in Landing. Hoyer and his friend, Stephanie Kealy of Morristown, joined about a dozen volunteers cleaning the water and roadside at Roland-May Eves. Hoyer said it was a chance to clean up his own piece of the lake. Kealy, a teacher with a degree in environmental science, said she had participated in many Jersey Shore beach cleanups. For Ted Pallis of Chester, at Roland-Eves with his daughter, Alexandra Pallis, 18, it was chance to return to the Lake Hopatcong region where he had grown up. “It’s an opportunity to help,” he said. The opportunity to help had Jerry Scanlan in hiking boots and shorts struggling through narrow water channels and layers of mud to retrieve a tire from the middle of the piece of Byram Cove shoreline near his home. (Why so many tires in a lake? For decades, tires have been used as buffers between docks and boats. When the nails or screws that fasten tires to docks fail over time, the tires sink to the bottom of the lake.) Cheering on Scanlan’s tire retrieval was Jule Girman, the chairwoman of Hopatcong’s environmental commission and Pat Hoferkamp, the commission’s deputy-chair. “In 2018, we pulled out a hot water heater,” Hoferkamp recalled. This year, she said, the group had only found the usual trash—tires, cans, bottles and the like—and a lot less of it. “Maybe we’re being better stewards of the lake,” she added. As Hoferkamp offered that assessment, Girman, completing a call with other event organizers, said reports from around the lake indicated that far less trash had been pulled from the lake than in the past. A report on the 2018 cleanup showed 7,700 items had been collected that year. A tally for this year’s event will be issued later by the foundation. “It’s an honor being a steward of the lake,” Girman said. “Maybe more people are paying attention.” One encouraging note offered by several volunteers at the end of the cleanup was that fewer single-use plastic bags were found among the trash collected. In 2022, New Jersey banned stores from using
plastic bags, requiring customers to use reusable bags for shopping. The 2018 report said 500 plastic bags had been pulled from the lake. Craig Bitten, a resident of Kingsland (a private development along the western shore of Landing Channel in Roxbury), said about one-third of the 49 homeowners in the development participated in the cleanup. Most of the residents also actively clean their shorelines during the year, he added. “It’s pride of ownership and taking care of the lake,” he said. Bitten noted there seems to be less to clean up this year, especially larger items. “We may be getting ahead of it,” he said. Bitten said residents are interested in the plans to dredge Landing Channel. The dredging—and the potential that an oxygenation system could be installed in the center of the lake—reflect an effort to address known lake pollution causes with larger projects. This effort is fueled by an urgency that arose after 2019 when the lake was essentially closed by an extensive and longlasting harmful algal bloom (HAB). Businesses in 2019 suffered significant losses as traditional lake activity diminished while the HAB persisted. Since 2019, using a combination of state funds and grants, pilot projects have spread around the lake, Left to right, top to bottom: At Mount Arlington Public Beach, volunteers, elected officials and members of the Lake Hopatcong Foundation stand with Kati Angarone, assistant New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection commissioner for watershed and land use management, third from left. Mount Arlington fourth-grade students and their parents roll tires that had once been attached to the docks at Lee’s County Park Marina but fell into the lake. (Photo courtesy of Donna Macalle-Holly.) A full toolbox pulled from the muck in King’s Cove. (Photo courtesy of Linda Karpiak.) Al Grabinski opens a trash bag for wife Claire Grabinski along the shoreline at Roland-May Eves Mountain Inlet Sanctuary in Hopatcong. Lee Moreau carries a bag of trash and a tire retrieved from the lake. Carolyn Rinaldi watches as Madelyn Adams pulls a piece of garbage from the lake. Roxana Scanlon reaches to grab a glass bottle while holding onto a dock finger near Brady Bridge. Donna Macalle-Holly, cleanup coordinator, with husband Bruce Holly, Anthony Fiumara and son, Anthony Fiumara, in Ashley Cove in Jefferson. Colleen Lyons, the administrator of the Lake Hopatcong Commission, previously reported. The projects included: the installation of floating wetland islands in Landing Channel in Roxbury; shoreline stabilization through plantings at Memorial Pond in Mount Arlington; replacement of filtration material in stormwater drains in Jefferson; and replanting of a wetland stormwater basin in Hopatcong. Another state grant funded projects in all four lake towns to install and maintain biochar (carbon) sleeves in two stormwater ponds and in a series of stormwater structures, manufactured treatment devices and inlets into Lake Hopatcong. The project also included the removal of sediment that has accumulated immediately in front of or adjacent to stormwater pipes or outfalls that discharge directly into the lake, Lyons said. A federal grant funded the restoration of Witten Park in Hopatcong where Sperry Spring will be rehabilitated with new plantings to stabilize its banks to better filter runoff. In addition, a new stormwater system will be installed to direct runoff to a naturally occurring slope before it enters the lake. Also, on Glen Brook in Mount Arlington’s Memorial Park, about 75 linear feet of the brook will be regraded and new plantings added to increase the filtration of runoff. In addition, Hopatcong installed sewers for 40 lakeside homes and Lake Hopatcong State Park was hooked into the local sewer system, eliminating an old septic system. Awaiting possible federal funding is a sewer system for lakeside Jefferson. A study of the Landing Channel project, funded by a $113,650 grant from the New Jersey Highlands Council, focused on the dredging process and “beneficial reuse” of the dredged materials, including the restoration of Floating Island. The oxygenation system would consist of oxygen generators placed on the shore of the lake and a system of pipes to carry the oxygen to the lake bottom. An exchanger device would mix the oxygen with the anoxic water, creating a higher level of dissolved oxygen in the turbid water, thus helping reduce the amount of phosphorus, the lake’s chief pollutant, said ...continued on page 24 lakehopatcongnews.com 23
Page 1: INFORMING, SERVING AND CELEBRATING
Page 4 and 5: 4 LAKE HOPATCONG NEWS Holiday 2023
Page 6 and 7: Left to right: Michael Jarmus as He
Page 8 and 9: KathySellsLakeHomes.com LAKEFRONT S
Page 10 and 11: 10 Local Businessman Bets Big and W
Page 12 and 13: A four-generation family run busine
Page 14 and 15: Debut of Jefferson Winter Stroll Pr
Page 16 and 17: CHRISTMAS @ THE BEACON Join us for
Page 18 and 19: Love of Therapy Dogs Inspires First
Page 20 and 21: FAMILY BUSINESS SINCE 1996! 973-846
Page 24 and 25: Lake Cleanup (cont’d.) Fred Lubno
Page 26 and 27: Woman’s Club Helps Those in Hopat
Page 28 and 29: Hopatcong to Offer Traditional Holi
Page 30 and 31: Lake Hopatcong... A fine food and f
Page 32 and 33: Goodbye to My Lake Hopatcong Flower
Page 34 and 35: HISTORY George Washington Did Not S
Page 36 and 37: COOKING WITH SCRATCH © Cookies Are
Page 38 and 39: WORDS OF A FEATHER 38 Story and pho
Page 40 and 41: directory CONSTRUCTION/ EXCAVATION
Page 42 and 43: ORTHWEST EXPLOSIVES BLASTING CONTRA
Page 44: PLEASE JOIN LIVETHELAKENJ FOR THE 2

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