ORONO – The eroding shore of Glenburn’s Lakeside Landing has been stabilized as part of a $98,000 grant from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to address pollution in Pushaw Lake.

The grant was awarded to Pushaw Partners, a group comprising University of Maine Cooperative Extension, the Penobscot County Soil and Water Conservation District, the Greater Pushaw Lake Association and local residents.

With funding from the grant and labor provided through a UMaine Extension lake education and action project, the group planted a vegetation buffer along the Lakeside Landing shore. In addition to preventing soil erosion, vegetation buffers provide filtering and percolation for runoff, and are designed to capture nutrients such as phosphorous for use by land vegetation rather than by lake algae.

The Lakeside Landing buffer was designed by a UMaine Extension master gardener. Installation was coordinated by Grace Nelson, watershed coordinator at the Penobscot County Soil and Water Conservation District and Extension AmeriCorps volunteer Katy Green.

Pushaw Lake, encompassing 4,680 acres and bordering four towns – Glenburn, Hudson, Old Town and Orono – is a major natural, recreational and economic resource in Greater Bangor.

But fertilizers from carefully manicured lakefront lawns wash directly into the lake. Oil and grease from motor vehicles are washed in from paved roads and driveways. Exposed soil on roads and driveways, along ditches, in new construction and along eroding shorelines carries phosphorus and other algae-stimulating nutrients into the water.

Watershed monitoring has revealed increasing levels of these nutrients in Pushaw over the past 10 years.

“In fact, if it weren’t for the natural brown color of Pushaw, the levels of phosphorus in the lake would probably be high enough to stimulate an algae bloom,” said extension assistant scientist Laura Wilson. Such choking aquatic vegetation disrupts lake ecosystems, decreases the recreational value of the lake and causes oxygen depletion that can lead to fish deaths.

The grant awarded to Pushaw Partners will help stabilize the phosphorus levels in the lake through projects that include restoration of erosion-prone roads, technical assistance for landowners with erosion problems and construction of vegetation buffers on private and public property.

The grant award was the result of years of research and hard work. In 2001, 20 area residents who participated in UMaine Extension’s Watershed Stewards Program joined with the Greater Pushaw Lake Association to improve the water quality of the lake.

These volunteers, with help from UMaine Extension and the Penobscot County Soil and Water Conservation District, found hundreds of sites within Pushaw’s 75-square mile watershed contributing pollution to the lake.

Collection of this data, along with expertise from UMaine Extension, was vital to the success of the grant proposal.

Access to the beach remains a primary use of Lakeside Landing, and has been maintained. The vegetation buffer will reduce the phosphorus input from the park, and serve as an attractive landscape for many years.