'Clearing the Water,' documentary about Lakes Region Clean Waters Association, premieres at Belknap Mill Sunday, March 13

LACONIA — "Clearing the Water," a new documentary about the Lakes Region Clean Waters Association (LRCWA), will be premiered at the Belknap Mill at 2 p.m. on Sunday March 13.

The film tells the story of the Clean Waters Association, founded in late 1969 to clean up New Hampshire's Lake Winnisquam. Through door to door campaigning, informational meetings, dogged research, good PR, lawsuits, and threats of lawsuits, the LRCWA took on the City of Laconia to do something about its sewage. Their actions led to the construction of a major state run waste water treatment plant in Franklin that serves 10 communities in the Lakes Region.

Many of the people involved and instrumental in the LRCWA were interviewed for this documentary, including former NH Senate President Stuart Lamprey, Former NH Speaker of the House George Roberts, and William Ruckelshaus, first administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA made one of its first grants to move along the work of the Clean Water Association. They also presented the Association with the first EPA Environmental Protection Award in 1975.

The fifty minute documentary was commissioned by the Clean Waters Association and produced by John Gfroerer of Accompany Video Production in Concord. Gfroerer has a long history of producing historic documentaries with a New Hampshire base. Past productions include biographies of NH Governor Sherman Adams, Union Leader Publisher William Loeb, and U.S. Senator Styles Bridges. Other topics have been histories of the Old Man of the Mountain, the Grand Resort Hotels of the White Mountains, the investigation of subversive activities in New Hampshire during the 1950s, and a history of the New Hampshire Presidential Primary.

For more information, call 226-3130.