The Lake Colby Association is not suing the village, and the Adirondack Council should not have to. Assuming our elected officials aren't up to the task, if anyone should be forcing the village to cease polluting Lake Colby, it is the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It's their job, something they have refused to do for eight years, ever since the pollution was first identified, and for more than five years since the source of that pollution was demonstrated beyond any doubt.

The Lake Colby Association is just the messenger in all of this - we monitor the water quality that led first to the $175,000 grant the village received to build a shed, and now to this enforcement action by an environmental group after the village took no action to stop the pollution for the subsequent four years.

In 1999, Lake Colby joined the Citizens Statewide Lake Association Program (CSLAP), and then in 2003 the Adirondack Lake Assessment Program (ALAP) administered by the Paul Smith's Watershed Institute. Each of these programs collects precise water-quality information, giving us 10 years of detailed data. Early on, they noted that Lake Colby's levels of chlorides and electrolytes were well above Adirondack norms and began to search for the reason. Unfortunately, we found the main source in our backyard - the exposed salt and sand piles at the village's municipal facility on Van Buren Street. Runoff from these exposed piles runs directly into Colby Brook, a tributary of Lake Colby that traverses the Van Buren site.

In 2003, we presented the DEC and then-Village Manager John Sweeney with photos of the sand and salt running into the brook and with the readings in the lake, which we also published on our Web site (www.LakeColby.org). We requested that the piles be contained in some way to prevent the runoff. The DEC confirmed to the village manager that the pollution was a direct violation of Section 17 of New York environmental protection laws. Nothing was done by the village, and no enforcement was undertaken by the DEC. The New York state and federal water-quality standard for chloride in surface waters is below 250 parts per million (ppm). In September of 2003, we documented levels of chlorides in the brook at 719 ppm and again asked for some redress, even just covering the piles. The village has been fully aware of the increasing levels of chlorides in the lake and, since 2003, of the source: Over 700 ppm in a brook running past the sand and salt pile is a smoking gun if there ever was one. Yes, Route 86 contributes to the salt with the excessive coverage the DOT applies each winter, but other lakes with roadsides along them do not get to 39 ppm, or even close.

For eight years, we have pressed the village to cover the sand and salt and the DEC to enforce New York law by forcing the village to act. We worked with then-Community Development Director Debbie McDonnell to get a grant for the village to build a shed. Thanks to her efforts and our data, a $175,000 matching grant was issued four years ago by the DEC, and we thought the pollution would soon end. No such luck. After failed attempts to build a joint shed with the town of Harrietstown (the town is now applying for its own grant) and failures to break a political stalemate that has prevented bonding the village's matching portion, we are exactly where we were eight years ago, but the lake is worse every year. I challenge anyone to tell me that you cannot contain a pile of sand for less than $350,000 (the grant and its match). Brighton and Franklin both built their sheds for less than half of that.

According to the most recent ALAP report, published in January 2009, "Background concentrations of chloride in Adirondack Lakes are usually less than 1 ppm. Chloride levels of 10 ppm and higher is usually indicative of pollution and, if sustained, can alter the distribution and abundance of aquatic plant and animal species." The average chloride level for Lake Colby in 2008 was 39 ppm.

Last year, the Adirondack Council, an environmental organization that has successfully led efforts to clean up direct sources of pollution, including similar sand and salt sites, approached the DEC about its failure to enforce New York and federal law in the case of the village of Saranac Lake. It threatened to bring a citizen's action under both New York and federal Clean Water acts if nothing changed. Nothing changed. The DEC said it had been in a dialogue with the village and was "monitoring" the situation. Under the law and its charter, the DEC is mandated to enforce New York and federal clean water laws but chose to do nothing for reasons only it can answer.

The village's suggestion that it is surprised by the suit are disingenuous. They have to know that they were breaking the law since the "smoking gun" data was handed (by me) to John Sweeney in 2003. And all of the data going back to the 1999 CSLAP report have been published, as received on the www.LakeColby.org Web site.

We at the Lake Colby Association deeply regret that it has reached this point: that the waters we drink and that your kids swim in are increasingly polluted by our own municipal government, and that even with four-year-old state funding, no solution is imminent. We hope our fellow citizens will join us in condemning this lack of responsible action and urge our officials to finally move to resolve it. The last thing we want is to have our taxes go up because the federal government is collecting $37,500 per day in fines for nonaction, when funding to solve the problem has been in hand for more than four years.

---

Lee Keet lives on Lake Colby in Saranac Lake and is the water quality manager and treasurer of the Lake Colby Association.