The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Candlewood Lake chair led with steady temperament
Temperament matters. That’s one of the nice lessons people can take away from Phyllis Schaer’s seven years as chairman of the Candlewood Lake Authority.
Other people may have known more about the lake’s history and biology or been more connected politically.
But Schaer’s temperament — non-confrontational, decent and absolutely steady at the helm — helped bring the authority through a time when it seemed to be edging to
ward unraveling.
“She had an uncanny way of dealing with problems,” said Larry Marsicano, the authority’s former director who still studies the lake as principal limnologist with Aquatic Ecosystems Research, a private company.
“She had to do a lot of heavy lifting for the authority,” said Mark Toussaint, who, after 19 years of leadership, is stepping down as vice chairman in tandem with Schaer’s leaving the chairmanship.
Both will stay on as members of the authority. Marianne Gaffney of Brookfield is the new chairwoman and Joan Archer of New Fairfield, the new vice chairwoman.
To understand the complexity of the authorities, here’s a quick Candlewood Lake tutorial.
At 5,420 acres, it is by far the largest inland body of water in the state — twice the size of its runnerup, Lake Lillinonah.
The five towns bordering it — Danbury, New Fairfield, Sherman, Brookfield and New Milford — and the towns surrounding them have lots of people who use the lake a lot.
Bass anglers, water skiers, power boat cruisers, sailors and swimmers all use its waters. Big-lawn home carpet much of its shoreline, bleeding nutrient-packed fertilizer run-off into its waters — nutrients that feed its invasive weeds.
It is also a man-made lake, created by Connecticut Light and Power Co. in the 1920s to generate electricity at the Rocky River power plant in New Milford. First Light Power Resources now owns the plant and the lake.
Add these things together — environmental problems, extensive recreation use, power generation, small-town politicking — and you’ve’ got a beautiful, knotty place.
“Only the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound are as complex,” Marsicano said.
When Schaer, who lives in Sherman, became chairman in 2013, small-town politicking was at its peak. Led by Jon Hodge, the former first selectman of New Fairfield, people questioned the authority’s finances, its way of doing business, it’s years of research of the lake’s water quality.
And Schaer admits she was no lake expert when she started.
“I had run a metallurgic engineering company with m husband, for 30 years,” she said. Before that, she’d been a dress designer.
But her management experience helped. The authority hired an auditor, she said, so that its financial probity could not be questioned.
She and Marsicano also began holding annual State of the Lake meetings, where the authority’s leaders could explain to people what it was doing. If people asked questions, they answered them as best as they could.
“That was one thing Larry and I felt strongly about,” Schaer said. “You can’t get people to be good stewards of the lake without understanding of its problems.”
And gradually, the fraying ended. The authority worked with the five towns on its annual budget presentation, so that the squabbling over spending ended.
That allowed the authority to concentrate more on some of the lake’s environmental problems. In 2015, it began releasing sterile grass carp into the lake to help control the growth of Eurasian watermilfoil, an invasive weed that forms mats of vegetation so thick that they can foil swimmers’ legs and boat propellers.
Marsicano said the carp program also showed how Schaer’s curiosity and desire to learn benefited Candlewood.
“She ended up knowing more about grass carp than I did,” he said.
The lake’s problems are never-ending. Global warming may be firing up growths of toxic blue-green algae in Candlewood every summer. Zebra mussels — an invasive, environment-altering species — have shown their faces in the lake three times in recent months.
And in 2020, people tired of coronavirus isolation, began meeting, unmasked, on the lake’s islands, littering up the place.
“There was an island off New Fairfield that had 150 people on it,” Toussaint said. “There were boats ferrying people out there and the garbage was everywhere.’’
Thanks to a $100,000 grant from First Light, the authority’s Lake Patrol will have a modern patrol boat to better handle situations like offshore Covid parties.
And Schaer, who is boning up on lake ecology — i.e., learning new things — will still be a presence at the authority.
“For me, life’s fascinating,” she said.