Monson Pond Watershed-Based Management Plan
Fort Fairfield & Easton, Maine & New Brunswick, Canada – A Watershed-Based Management plan for a shallow, impounded lake with a highly agricultural watershed provides a path forward for water quality improvement.
Ecological Instincts was hired by the Town of Fort Fairfield to help develop a Watershed-Based Management Plan (WBMP) for Monson Pond. The pond’s watershed includes 14.7 square miles of land in the towns of Fort Fairfield and Easton, and in New Brunswick, Canada. Monson Pond is an important resource for recreation in Fort Fairfield, and the town utilizes surface water from Pattee Brook, the outlet stream for Monson Pond, as a drinking water source. Monson Pond is unique because of the dominance of limestone in the surrounding watershed which results in high measures of alkalinity, pH and specific conductivity.
Monson Pond is listed as “Impaired” on the Maine DEP’s Nonpoint Source (NPS) Priority Watershed List due to a history of nuisance algal blooms and enrichment from excess phosphorus inputs from the watershed. Water quality seems to be improving since data collection began in the 1970s, but water clarity remains low with an average of just 2.4 m from 2003-2022. The large size of the watershed increases the potential for excess nutrient pollution from overland flow into Monson Pond. The watershed is almost 30% agricultural, further increasing the potential for nutrient inputs, though trends in recent years have seen agricultural land moving from larger-scale commercial potato production toward smaller vegetable farms and pasture utilized by Amish families.
Tasks associated with developing the WBMP included overall project and grant management, reviewing watershed survey results, preparing a survey fact sheet, and calculating soil loss estimates for survey sites, assisting with an agricultural survey, assessing impacts from septic systems, analyzing the potential for internal phosphorus loading, guiding water quality monitoring efforts, completing a water quality trend analysis, watershed modeling, presentations at public meetings, setting a 10-year water quality goal for Monson Pond that includes recommendations for reducing NPS pollution from the watershed, and developing a US EPA approved WBMP.
This project was funded in part by a US EPA 604(b) grant in partnership with Maine DEP, towns of Fort Fairfield and Easton, Friends of Monson Pond, Central Aroostook Soil & Water Conservation District, USDA/NRCS, Maine DIFW, and Ecological Instincts.