Water level conundrum
Environmental professionals analyze data to solve water level mystery
MOREAU, N.Y. >> Throughout the year, residents and tourists alike f lock to Moreau Lake within Moreau Lake State Park, comprised of 4,100 acres divided by the Hudson River in northern Saratoga and southern Warren Counties of upstate New York.
Many are unaware that behind the scenes, two environmental professionals are part of a team conducting a five-year study to attempt to unravel a geological mystery that surfaced in the park and surrounding area in 2015.
Moreau Lake is a recreational water body used by the public for swimming, fishing, and boating and the surrounding area is used for hiking, camping, and beach activities. It has 3.6 miles of shoreline.
New York State Park officials who monitor the operation and public use of Moreau Lake observed that the beach area was becoming compressed. To the layman, that means the lake was losing its shallow end. While a seasonal variation of lake level is expected, the 4- 5 foot decrease in the lake level that was observed was unprecedented. Because such a change caused concern and prompted an investigation, now in its third year.
Playing i mportant roles in the active collection and tracking of water level data being used to discern the probable causes of such a dramatic drop are USGS hydrologist Paul M. Heisig, P.G. based in Troy, and NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Natural Resources Steward Casey
Holzworth.
“This has been the biggest change in the aquifer during the last 20 years. It is like placing more straws into a drink,” said Heisig, who poses that construction of residential wells in surrounding developments, and changes in rainfall, snowfall, and snowmelt patterns are likely contributing factors.
Heisig utilizes graphs and state- of-the- art tools to create topographic maps of the changing conditions at Moreau Lake. He studies images of the region produced with Lidar, a 3-D laser scanning technology commonly used to make high-resolution maps.
The Lidar images show different textures associated with the bedrock of the Palmerton Range to the left (west) of the lake, smooth sand, and gravel around the lake, and finergrained deposits to the right (east) that have been incised by streams fed in part by groundwater discharge from springs and seeps. The Hudson River bisects the park and separates the northern Luzerne Mountains from the southern Palmertown Range.
“With that imagery we can clearly see that Moreau Lake was formed during an advancing and recession of glacial ice, forming what we refer to as a kettle lake,” said Hesig.
He explained t hat Moreau Lake doesn’t have tributaries and is largely dependent upon the water table, precipitation and snowmelt.
His graphs track differences between annual precipitation and the longterm (60 year) median precipitation as recorded at the Glens Falls airport. USGS began monitoring the lake level by establishing a baseline to portray how water levels change.
“What we observed was out of the ordinary,” said NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Natural Resources Steward Casey Holzworth, whose job it is to protect and enhance the environment in New York state parks.
“We want to relay to the public that we partnered with USGS and agreed to jointly fund a low budget project, using some real science, to develop a research plan and present the data to get to the cause of why the water levels were significantly lower at Moreau and the surrounding area” said Holzworth, who operates from the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation in Saratoga Springs at the Spa State Park.
“We asked where is that water going and what, if anything, can we do about it?”, he said.
USGS will spend the winter analyzing data and creating a plan based on that information. “Last year USGS analyzed two seasons of data; after this season, they’ll have more information to observe ant trends,” said Holzworth. There will be one more field season and a final analysis will be available to the pub- lic in 2021.
“It all depends on what we find. It’s important to come at this from an unbiased, scientific perspective and to present the facts to the public” he adds.
Hesig states “This is an ongoing project. I would like to invite homeowners and property owners who might be interested in participating in the project to contact me to help define water levels in other portions of the aquifer. I hope to be able to say what are the most important factors influencing the water level.”
Anyone interested in participating in the water level monitoring can contact Paul M. Heisig, Hydrologist, P.G. d at U.S. Geological Survey, WRD by email at pmheisig@usgs.gov.
All water-level data to date at Moreau Lake is accessible on the web at https:// waterdata. usgs. gov/ny/nwis/uv/?site_ no= 431357073425301&PARAmeter_cd=72019,62610,62611