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| The Finger Lakes region of central New York is characterized by a dozen lakes whose watersheds include a variety of valuable natural resources, including water, fish and wildlife habitat, wetlands, and forest. The lakes and their watersheds are used extensively for agriculture, recreation, and tourism, highlighting the link between resource protection and the regional economy.
To better guide efforts aimed at protecting and improving the water quality in the Finger Lakes, the Division of Coastal Resources has encouraged communities to develop a planning process that is focused on watersheds and not political boundaries.
Attention has centered on Cayuga Lake, Conesus Lake and Canandaigua Lake. Although various plans had been completed over the years for these lakes, these tended to be dated and lacked the direct involvement of the local governments. This regional initiative has completed and is now implementing three watershed plans. The plans and their implementation is being overseen by a partnership comprised of the local governments within each watershed, state agencies, and advocacy organizations involved in lake protection. Existing planning entities, such as a regional planning board or county planning department, are providing technical support.
Citation: NYS Department of State 2004/ NYS DOS Division of Coastal Resources, Coastal Resources Online/ Website/ http://www.nyswaterfronts.com/initiatives_fingerlakes.asp/ March 12, 2010
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Can We Make A Difference?
Can individual homeowners do their part to improve water quality? The answer is YES! There are several things that we can do around our houses to improve water quality. The way that we manage our lawns, driveways, and ditches has a huge impact on the condition of the water as it leaves our property. We can also affect water quality by carefully selecting and using pesticides and fertilizers.
Would you believe that during a half inch rainfall event, a one acre lawn collects about 13,600 gallons of water? Depending on the time of year, much of that water may be absorbed by your lawn, but what happens to the rest of the water, and what happens when the lawn is either frozen or already saturated with water? The water that is not absorbed by our lawns is called runoff, and depending on where it flows and what it flows through, it can have a devastating impact on downstream ecology and ultimately, the health of Owasco Lake. The key to properly managing runoff is to slow down the water to give the soil, nutrients, and chemicals that the water may be carrying a chance to fall out of suspension. Soil, nutrients, and chemicals are known to cause degradation of water quality and consequently, damage to our ecosystems.
GreenScaping
The term ‘GreenScaping’ is used to describe environmentally conscious landscaping. Responsible lawn care includes but is not limited to using only organic fertilizers, or no fertilizers at all, minimizing herbicide and pesticide use, integrated pest management, composting yard waste, using drip irrigation, planting buffer strips to slow and filter lawn runoff, and capturing roof runoff for later use.
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The Citizen published an article about the OWN kickoff event last Friday night. The night was quite enjoyable and John McCarthy's slideshow was absolutely spectacular. We would like to thank John as well as Joe Wasileski for their participation.
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Title: Using GPS
Dates: 3/8 or 8/3
6pm – 8pm
Audience: General Public
Price: $35
Description: Have you ever wanted to know more about GPS or have you received a GPS unit for Christmas that you still have not used? This 2 hour class will teach the basics behind the Global Positioning System (GPS) and how to use a hand-held GPS unit. Participants will become familiar with a variety of uses for GPS and gain hands-on experience with a hand-held GPS unit. This class will touch on the use of GPS for a variety of navigation purposes. A personal GPS unit is not required for this course.
Space is limited.
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