The next 50 years of the Averill Lakes Association - as a registered 501(c)(3) Vermont Nonprofit Corporation

Photo Credit: Rebecca Scott

After months of discussion and expert counsel from member Jim Clemons, the leadership and board of directors of the Averill Lakes Association unanimously voted on March 20, 2025 to recommend to the membership for their approval at the 2025 Annual Meeting that we formally reorganize as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization under the auspices of the Vermont Nonprofit Corporation Act. There were a number of drivers to take this step:

1. Donations to the ALA will be tax deductible for members and other stakeholders.

2. 501(c)(3) status would make us eligible for matching corporate donations when their employees donate to the ALA.

3. 501(c)(3) status would allow us to seek grant money only eligible for non-profits to fund upcoming recommended Averill Lakes Watershed Action Plan projects.

4. Incorporating as a Vermont non-profit would provide limited liability to Directors and Officers which will hopefully spur more Director and Officer candidates to come forward

A draft of the new bylaws, a memo from Jim Clemons on the benefits and obligations of reorganizing the ALA as a 501(c)(3), and a link to the Vermont Nonprofit Corporation act can all be found at the Governance section of our website. There you can also see all of the approved minutes of the ALA for the last 3 years. We wanted to give you all plenty of notice of our recommendation and make all of these materials available for your review. This will be part of the new business section of our Annual Meeting where a motion will be made to formally become a Vermont Nonprofit Corporation. After a "second" to the motion, we look forward to a robust discussion and hopefully successful vote to take this next logical step into the future. On behalf of the Leadership and Board of Directors of the Averill Lakes Association, I thank you in advance for your thoughtful consideration. Bernie Gracy President, Averill Lakes Association.

Announcing a Public Meeting for Wakesports Pre-Rulemaking for the Averill Lakes: 4pm, December 10th, 2024 in Newport VT. Submit a Comment!

We have been notified by VTDEC's Lakes and Ponds Program of an upcoming public meeting to receive public input on proposed changes to Vermont’s Use of Public Waters Rules. On April 15, 2024, the new rule under Vermont’s Use of Public Waters Rules went into effect regulating wakeboats and wakesports on Vermont’s inland lakes. There are 30 inland lakes eligible for wakesports including Great and Little Averill Lake. The ALA and seven other lake associations, representing nine lakes that are eligible for wakesports, have submitted petitions to the Watershed Management Division under the Use of Public Waters Rules requesting to prohibit wakesports on individual lakes.  

In accordance with the “procedure for evaluating petitions to adopt, amend or repeal surface water and wetland rules,” the Lakes and Ponds program will hold a public meeting for five of the petitioning lakes associations to foster public participation in the petition process prior to making a determination on whether or not to initiate formal rulemaking. These include Great and Little Averill Lakes, Echo Lake in Charleston, Lake Parker (Glover), Shadow Lake (Glover), and Lake Willoughby.

The meeting will take place December 10, 2024 from 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm at The Gateway Center 84 Fyfe Dr., Newport, VT 05855 or online via Microsoft Teams, using the link at the meeting time:  Join the meeting now

Meeting ID: 271 524 703 497

Passcode: jhv7DQ

OR: Dial in by phone

+1 802-828-7667,,934454274#

Your ALA leadership will be present at the meeting but you can submit your own comment now! Let VTDEC Lakes and Ponds know how you feel about wake sports on our lakes. You can see the testimony that Gennette and I submitted last year for inspiration. Please submit written comments to anr.wsmdlakes@vermont.gov . Public comments will be accepted until 4:30 p.m. on December 23, 2024. When submitting a public comment, please include the word "wakesports" in the subject line AND "Great and Little Averill Lake" for which you are providing a comment. 

Registration to provide verbal comments at the public meeting will be available two weeks prior to the meeting. Note that equal weight is given to comments that are made in person, virtually, or in writing. Here is the draft meeting agenda - note the Averill Lakes Association is up first!

• 4:00: DEC intro to the petition process and meeting purpose

• 4:15: Averill lakes petitioner overview

• 4:25: Averill lakes petition comments

• 5:00: Echo Lake petitioner overview

• 5:10: Echo Lake petition comments

• 5:45: Lake Parker petitioner overview

• 5:55: Lake Parker petition comments

• 6:30: Shadow Lake petitioner overview

• 6:40: Shadow Lake petition comments

• 7:15: Lake Willoughby petitioner overview

• 7:25: Lake Willoughby petition comments

• 8:00 Wrap-up

Copies of all the petitions, along with any updates and pertinent information are available at the following link: https://dec.vermont.gov/watershed/lakes-ponds/lakes-and-ponds-rulemaking.

More information about the wakesports regulation can be found here: https://dec.vermont.gov/watershed/lakes-ponds/vermont-use-public-waters-rules/wakeboats

Bernie Gracy President, Averill Lakes Association

ALA 3Q 2024 Newsletter

We hope you had an amazing summer on the lakes. For the Averill Lakes Association - this has been a summer for the record books. As we celebrate our 50th year, we have kicked it up another notch to better understand and protect the health of our beautiful lakes. It is also gratifying to see the depth of local, regional, and statewide leadership, partnership, cooperation, and collaboration that is taking place with VTDEC, the Essex County Natural Resources Conservation District, the Memphremagog Watershed Association, the UTG, ARCO, Quimby Country, Jackson's Lodge, the LVS, and others with the ALA leadership and community volunteer-members. There is a lot to report out so let's get to it! AIS Prevention: Great and Little Averill Greeter Courtesy Boat Inspection Program

After a successful pilot program we conducted in 2023, we launched our Greeter Courtesy Boat Inspection program on both lakes weekends from 8 am to 4 pm from the July 4th weekend to Labor Day weekend. A HUGE shout out to Matt Laferriere and Craig & Vicki Augustinsky for a job well done and to Susan Gresser who spearheaded this! The information our greeters captured were both fascinating and somewhat alarming - demonstrating the importance of this program for continued visibility and vigilance.

On Little Averill, 51 boats were inspected with the intended use of 56% recreation and 43% fishing. These boats were last in Lake Memphremagog, Neal Pond, Crystal Lake, Lake Carmi, Jobs Pond, Arrowhead Mountain Lake, Bald Hill Pond, Peacham Pond, Center Pond, Lake Seymour, Echo Lake, Lake Wallace, Island Pond, Norton Pond, and Great Averill lakes as well as the Coaticook and Connecticut Rivers. Motorized and non-motorized boats were split nearly 50/50.

On Great Averill, 93 boats were inspected - 80% for intended recreational purposes, 20% for fishing. Those boats were last in Lake Champlain, Seymour Lake, Maidstone Lake, Little Averill, Norton Pond, Island Pond, Martin Meadow Pond (NH), as well as Otter Creek and the Connecticut River. Two-thirds of the boats inspected on the launch at Great Averill were motorized, only 1/3 non-motorized. Some of the lakes mentioned above like Champlain, Memphremagog, Seymour, Arrowhead, Carmi, Echo, Seymour, Otter Creek, and the Connecticut river have a confirmed presence (2023) of an aquatic invasive species or species of concern. Our greeters did not find any invasive species in the combined 144 boat inspections. However there is a strong sample gap - because of available funding we were limited to weekends from 8-4. Arrivals before or after those hours or Monday through Fridays could not be inspected. We are blind to the number of additional boats entering our lakes and where they are from outside of our inspection hours.

Best practices for relaunching a boat in 5 days is to clean off mud and plants from the boat, trailer, motor and other equipment (and discarding removed material in a trash receptacle or on high, dry ground where there is no danger of them washing into any water body), draining all water from the boat, motor, bilge, live wells, ballast tanks, storage compartments, gear, and other equipment (away from the water); opening and removing drain plugs while trailering, and drying anything that came in contact with the water in the sun for at least five days. This greeter program is thus a last line of defense for our lakes for boaters who do not follow best practices. The gold standard is to rinse any incoming boats with high-pressure hot water at a nearby decontamination station, especially if the boat has been in a prior waterbody containing an invasive species. At our 4th quarter board meeting - we will be discussing the potential of expanding the greeter program in days per week coverage, hours per day, staffing, and required funding and labor model to support. We are also exploring the potential of establishing a decontamination station.

Annual Camp Dues raised to $30 and can now be paid online

At the 2024 Annual Meeting held on June 23 at Quimby Country - the membership voted to raise the dues to $30 per camp to create more funding capacity for the greeter program. We received a grant from VTDEC this year that funded 82% of our costs to launch this partial program on both lakes. The ALA absorbed the additional 18% expense. Prior to this year most programs in Vermont had been funded at 35% of expense, and associations and municipalities had to pick up the difference. This year, lobbying efforts by individuals and the Federation of Vermont Lakes and Ponds (FOVLAP) resulted in $500,000 being added into the 2024 state budget. There is no guarantee of a repeat next year. You can now subscribe to the ALA via this link with your credit card. Your annual membership will auto-renew and ensure that the flow of funds can be deployed to protect our lakes. You also retain the existing choice to mail in a check once a year with this form or pay directly at the annual meeting. We thank the membership who overwhelmingly voted to increase the dues to continue this important last line of vigilance, defense, and visibility. The minutes from the annual meeting can be found here.

Lake Watershed Action Plan - Lot's of Action!

The Memphremagog Watershed Association (MWA) hit the ground running this summer:

• Shoreland assessments (via boat) were conducted around the entire perimeter of each lake.

• 5 Lake Wise assessments performed in July & early August. We now have 16 Lake Wise awards - 8 each on Great and Little Averill!

• 232 observations were collected from stream, road, or lakeshore assessments!

• 10 potential projects identified so far:

  • 3 roads

  • 3 lakeshore areas

  • 3 stream crossings

  • 1 forested gully

If you are a map geek like me - you can explore all of this in an interactive map that can be found here.

Now that the leaves have dropped, the MWA will do more ground assessments along streams and forest roads/trails taking advantage of stick season and the improved visibility.  

During the 2025 mud season, they will re-visit the road assessments and then early next summer they hope to wrap up the lake wise assessments. We look forward to a full report out of their findings and recommendations at the next Annual Meeting.

Tributary and Lake Monitoring

The leadership of the ALA recognized the continued dedication of Connie Jackson, Don Tase, and Kim Hubbard for their tributary and lake water quality monitoring community science efforts. We all owe them a debt of gratitude.

Their data has been shared with the MWA for the LWAP and I will be hosting a winter webinar for interested membership to show how this valuable data when combined with the meteorological data captured by a NOAA weather station at the Lake View Store points to the potential effects of Beavers, Bogs, and Browning for the statistically significant rise of Phosphorus on Little Averill Lake. As we approach the Thanksgiving season, we would like to thank our members, greeters, citizen scientists, volunteers, collaborators, partners, and supporters for everything that you do for our beautiful corner of the world.

On behalf of a grateful Leadership and Board of Directors,

Bernie Gracy President, Averill Lakes Association