Boating, fishing, or taking in the scenery — Candlewood Lake is a favorite summer spot for residents of upper Fairfield County. But did you know Connecticut’s largest lake is actually man-made? Candlewood has been generating hydroelectric power for almost a century.
Folks with the Candlewood Lake Authority are the eyes and ears out here. Their brand-new research vessel, docked in New Fairfield, is souped up with lots of cool technology to keep the lake safer and cleaner.
"We designed it from the start and put the different features in that fit well for us," said Mark Howorth, who runs the group. He also grew up on this.
"Obviously, you know, lakes don't have town lines and things like that, so it gets tricky,"
Howorth said. "For public safety to be performed on a body of water that crosses municipal boundaries, they decided to form an organization."
And so, the Lake Authority was born in 1972. Along with New Fairfield, Danbury, Brookfield, Sherman, and New Milford also border this Y-shaped lake. It is 11 miles long and gets up to 90 ft deep.
"And on the environmental side, we are sort of misnamed because we don't have any authority over the environmental side," Howarth said. "But we do a lot of the research, study, and then we make recommendations, you know, whether it's regulations or things like that. We also work, you know, at the state level with regulators."
The new boat also has sonar capability. Being a man-made lake, there are still remnants of what was here before that we can now see below the surface, including a bridge.
"That was there in the 1920s before they flooded the lake," Mark said, pointing to the screen as we passed over. We can see either end of the bridge that used to run over a small river.
So, let's back it up to 1926 when the idea for Candlewood got the 'okay.' Joining us on board is Len Greene with FirstLight, the company that has managed operations here since 1999. He explains this engineering feat was the first of its kind in the United States.
"It's a big, beautiful battery that was designed 100 years ago this year, was finally built in '29, so we're coming up on the official 100th anniversary of this lake," Greene said. "And it was built to generate electricity, essentially store water that is discharged down through a big pipe down the hill in New Milford, into a station called Rocky River."
At the bottom of the lake is the small farming town of Jerusalem. Homes, schools, graveyards, and more were demolished and moved before the area was flooded out.
"It's an amazing feat of engineering if you think about the time they did it and the technology that they had to do it with, you know, steam shovels and in some cases things by hand," Greene said. "And 100 years later, it's still operating and doing what it's supposed to do from an electricity standpoint and obviously, has created a fantastic place for people to live and recreate.
That is on full display here today — water skiing, kayaking, tubing. We can see this place is clearly the spot for summer fun as we cruise up to the north end in New Milford to check out the dam.
"If we were able to see over the top, it's a huge, very steep slope," Greene said. "But where that turnoff is past the boat barrier, that is actually the intake for the hydroelectric facility. So, if you go down that channel, at the end, there's this massive tower that is essentially the drain, where water comes in and comes and goes down the penstock into the station."
While FirstLight handles power above the surface, once you get underwater, that's where Sophie Licht comes in as the Lake Authority's director of ecology. And like Mark, she grew up on this lake too.
"The lake is kind of why I went to school for, yeah, marine and freshwater biology," Licht said. "There's just so many interesting things about it."
She said it's special to be able to return to her hometown.
"I haven't lived here in ten years, so it's really awesome to be able to come back and learn a whole different side of the lake and try to do everything we can to protect it."
Licht started work here this summer. Sometimes she gets to jump in the lake with scuba gear.
"You probably have, like, on a good day, around five to ten feet of visibility. It's very green, but there are a lot of fish in this lake," she said. "There's some big, massive carp, bass — I can see, when I'm underwater, why this is such a good bass fishing lake."
And of course, zebra mussels — a tiny, freshwater mollusk from southeastern Europe. Licht explains that unfortunately, it looks like this invasive is here to stay.
"Zebra mussels are pretty well established in Candlewood right now. They're here and they have a reproducing population, so it is kind of is what it is. Their new concern is hydrilla, which is an invasive weed, an aquatic plant, that we don't have in the lake right now, but it's in the Housatonic River."
That is how easily these things can take over a local ecosystem, outcompeting native species for food and habitat.
"A lot of these plants spread through fragmentation, so if you break a piece off and throw it in a lake, that piece of plant can actually reproduce, and that could establish and then start a whole new population. So, it just really takes that one."
Every winter, FirstLight draws down the water levels in the lake. It helps with maintenance, but it's also a great way to get an idea of what's growing below. Exposing aquatic plants to lower temperatures freezes them down to the root and prevents them from growing back as easily next year. It also helps with those pesky zebra mussels.
The team said there are other invasives they're keeping an eye out for, including ones that are not in Connecticut yet, or even in New England. For example, golden mussels in California, or round goby found in the Great Lakes.
"Zebra mussels we have, right, but there's also quagga mussels which are a cousin of the zebra mussels but tend to be more prolific than zebra mussels," Howarth said. "Those have been moving east and towards this area, so it's certainly possible that, you know, at some point we could really have that threat at our doorstep. As Sophie mentioned the golden mussels — right now they're in California, but those sound like they're even worse! But again, far away, but these things — as they call them, aquatic hitchhikers — hitch a ride on a boat and get brought to another body of water.
The best way to keep these pests out is to clean, drain, and dry your boat before putting it in another body of water. As long as people do that, Candlewood Lake can keep providing fun and power for years to come! "
