West Harbor Pond consists of a lower basin with a maximum depth of 25’ and an upper basin with a maximum depth of 37’, divided by a ridge with a depth of 18’. Because the intake of the 1880 siphon reached only to a depth of about 15’, the saltwater below that depth was not removed. This saltwater, being denser than the freshwater that the Pond receives from its tributaries, accumulates at the bottom, where its greater density prevented seasonal turnover and reoxygenation of the Pond. Thus, even during the period when the 1880 siphon was operating, the water below the 15-foot level remained entirely deoxygenated. Moreover, the Pond receives regular infusions of saltwater, which floods into the Pond in large quantities during king tides when the water from the inner harbor overtops the small dam in the box culvert.

In 2008, the 1880 siphon fractured, and thereafter the water in the upper level of the Pond began to deteriorate, with rising salinity and decreasing oxygen. In 2013, the West Harbor Pond Watershed Association, formed in 2009 with the mission of protecting and preserving the Pond, made the connection between this deterioration and the broken siphon and began testing the water column for salinity and dissolved oxygen. Their testing showed that below 15’ the Pond was a dead zone, its water highly saline, completely deoxygenated, and permeated with hydrogen sulfide, the natural product of vegetative decay in an anoxic environment. And the WHPWA feared that, with the failure of the 1880 siphon, the interface between the oxygenated and deoxygenated water was gradually rising.

The Association appealed to the state and municipal governments to repair the 1880 siphon, but to no avail. The State argued that it did not own the siphon – even though it ran through the dam that supported State Route 27 – and had no responsibility for repairing it. The Town argued that, because the Pond has no public beach or boat launch, it would be improper to devote public monies to what was, in its view, a private community.

In 2016, the Boothbay Region Water District generously offered to donate used six-inch high-density polyethylene water pipe, and the labor to fuse it, for use in the construction of a replacement siphon, provided that the WHPWA hire an engineering firm to draw up plans for the new siphon. The next year the WHPWA, with the support of the Town of Boothbay Harbor, received a Coastal Communities grant from the Maine Coastal Program of the Department of Agriculture to cover the engineering costs. In 2018, with the plans and permits in hand, the WHPWA launched a fund-raising campaign that netted over $60,000 in private donations from the Boothbay community in a matter of three months to replace the broken siphon.

The replacement siphon was installed in the winter of 2018-2019. Its intake is located at a depth of 25’, the deepest point of the lower basin. A page describing the five-year effort to replace the broken siphon can be found on the Pond Association's website at https://www.westharborpond.org/the-siphon-1. This page also contains a photo-essay titled “Green Dye on the Water” chronicling the siphon’s installation (last item on webpage).

This is an excerpt from Merritt Blakeslee’s article on West Harbor Pond.

READ the full story & see more photos of this pond HERE!.

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