Jane Nash: Clarify the facts about requests for funding for Lake Kanasatka

To The Daily Sun,

I am vice president of the Lake Kanasatka Watershed Association that brought before the Moultonborough Town Meeting a request for $60,000 to help fund the development of a watershed management plan for Lake Kanasatka. That request was approved in May by the voters, for which we are very grateful. Again, we thank the town residents for their support. At that time, there was a concern that LKWA would come back and request additional funding from the Town of Moultonborough and its taxpayers. At that Town Meeting, I as chair of the committee made a promise on behalf of the LKWA that we would not come back to the town and request additional funding from the taxpayer revenue base. This was a one-time request. I intend to see that promise is kept.

WMPs have proven to be successful in every case where there was widespread support. To this end, LKWA will continue to search for additional funding sources at both the state and federal level to ensure that the WMP plan is a success.

We have made significant progress over the past year in developing our watershed management plan. We have recently completed the fieldwork and preliminary research portion of the process. All of this activity examined conditions that impact Lake Kanasatka’s water quality.

During the research phase, we were able to identify certain areas of polluted stormwater runoff which clearly are having a direct negative impact on the water quality of the lake. Funding for these projects through conventional state and federal channels requires the WMP to be finalized and filed with the state before applying for mitigation funding. We feel that addressing these projects as soon as possible would directly benefit the water quality of the lake, now. Funding sources for Lake Kanasatka from the state of New Hampshire would not be available until 2023 at the earliest.

To be clear, we are not asking for additional monies from town tax revenue, but monies that are available through the federal American Rescue Plan Act and administered by local government. We believe that immediately acting on these projects would deliver a direct improvement in both water quality and infrastructure thus making them eligible for ARPA funding. Many residents currently use Lake Kanasatka as their primary water source. We proposed specific projects to the select board for consideration of ARPA funding to avoid delays in implementation.

After a discussion of eligibility, our request for ARPA funding was denied. We have since delivered to the select board additional information regarding the eligibility of our proposals under the ARPA program. At this time the board is revisiting their initial decision and we thank them for reconsidering our request and eligibility under the federal ARPA program.

Saving Lake Kanasatka is a win for the town of Moultonborough. We are in this together and together we will save Lake Kanasatka and its surrounding watershed.

Jane Nash

Moultonborough