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In This Issue

*Thank you for Exceeding the 2025 Clean Lakes Challenge

*Advocacy in Action: Winter Webinar Kick Off

*Watershed Survey Grants Application Open
*New Lake Scorecard Available from DEP
*New OUR SHORE Resources

Greetings! 


We hope you enjoyed time with family and friends this holiday season, and that, like me, you are optimistic about the year ahead. While we see many challenges, both for environmental protection in general and for Maine’s lakes in particular, we also see many opportunities. We look forward to working with you in the year ahead to turn those opportunities into programming, funding, and action for clean and healthy lakes. We hope this enews issue, which focuses on new resources for the new year, helps you prepare for the many opportunities that are coming our way.

Thank you for all you do to support Maine’s lakes!

Thank you for Exceeding the 2025 Clean Lakes Challenge

An enormous and heartfelt thank you to the many generous donors, including current members, new members, and lake association members, who helped make our first ever Challenge Grant an enormous success. You smashed our goal by contributing more than $35,000 to support Maine Lakes. This not only more than doubles our typical year-end giving but also prompts an additional $10,000 from an anonymous donor. This means that Maine Lakes is starting 2026 off with more than $45,000 in unrestricted funding that will give us the flexibility to focus on the most important programs and initiatives in the year ahead, including LakeSmart, freshwater education, and advocacy.

Thank you to all who took part in the Challenge!  


And it’s not too late! Although the Challenge is over, your donations to Maine Lakes are always welcome. Click HERE to start your new year off with a donation to Maine Lakes.

Advocacy in Action: Winter Webinar Kick Off

With your help, we have an incredible opportunity in 2026 to pass a major lake funding bill that will allocate $2 million each year to the Lake Water Quality Protection and Restoration Fund.

The fund is set up to support projects related to water quality, including funding watershed surveys, erosion mitigation (e.g., Best Management Practices), in-lake phosphorus treatment (e.g., alum treatments), research, and lake education, including the potential for matching grant programs that will get some of this money out to communities and the lake associations that do so much great work to protect lakes. 

The funding would come from unclaimed bottle deposits - currently estimated to be between $10-$17 million dollars annually - the majority of which remain with the bottling industry. The bill would also provide $2M for farmland protection, so will bring even more advocates and supporters behind the rallying call for support. 

The opposition from industry lobbyists will be fierce.

We need YOU to speak up for this important bill!

Join Maine Lakes, Lake Stewards of Maine, and members of the Lake Protection Coalition as our Winter Webinar series kicks off with two interactive advocacy trainings focused on messaging around this bill and strategies to ensure success. You'll network with other lake advocates in breakout rooms where you can hone your messaging and brainstorm strategies. The content covered in both webinars will be the same so you only need to sign up for one. We look forward to seeing you there!



Tuesday, January 13th noon-1, register HERE or 

Thursday, January 15th 5:30-6:30, register HERE 

Can't join the webinar but want to stay informed? Sign up for Maine Lakes’ Legislative Alerts HERE .  



Thank you for all you do for Maine's lakes and for supporting this amazing opportunity for lakes! 

Watershed Survey Grants Applications Open

Photo Credit: Thompson Lake Environmental Association

Watershed Surveys engage community volunteers to help identify sources of erosion in the lands around a lake as a way to identify, prioritize, and hopefully resolve the largest sources of erosion that have the biggest impact on lake water quality. They are an effective tool as not only do they help identify problem areas, they help increase overall public awareness about threats to lake health and can serve as rallying calls to action for a community.  

Maine Lakes has renewed its commitment to funding small grants for watershed survey activities in 2026 together with Lake Stewards of Maine. By pooling our resources, our two organizations will be able to provide small grants to assist many groups as they embark on new (or repeat) watershed surveys. 


Although the surveys are intended to identify relatively easy-to-detect and resolve problems associated with soil erosion (the greatest non-point source of phosphorus in many Maine lakes), they also examine properties within the larger watershed, not just on the lakeshores. Addressing watershed health in this holistic way helps bring together individuals with diverse ecological, economic, recreational and social perspectives. This has been shown to enhance successful long-term lake stewardship. 

 Funding is available for lake, watershed, or other community organizations that have major involvement with watershed survey planning. Grants are due on February 9, 2026. 

Grants are generally less than $750 and fund activities associated with volunteers (e.g., food for events, printing invitations, marketing community meetings, community meeting space rentals, etc.) or expenses that are not covered by other grant sources. Grant applications are reviewed by a joint team from Maine Lakes and Lake Stewards of Maine through the month of February, with decisions made by March 1. Major considerations in the review process include: coordination with Maine Department of Environmental Protection, work that has already been done by the organization, and past funding. 


Questions? Email info@lakes.me or stewards@lakestewardsme.org. 

For more about watershed surveys, click HERE

New Lake Scorecards Available from DEP

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has developed a new lake scorecard for every lake in Maine. The scorecard summarizes many types of lake data into one color-coded graphic, based on current lake health conditions or trends. In addition to the quick visual snapshot you see on the scorecard, there is a wealth of information that puts scores in context for each lake and provides additional information and in-depth explanations for each category of information. 

You can use the lake scorecard to share more information with your community about the vulnerability of your lake and how you can help your scorecard turn blue, the highest scoring color category for each of the four areas assessed.  

To find a lake's scorecard, click HERE and search for a lake. You may see a list of multiple lakes for common lake names, so look for town and county information to find the one you are looking for. 

Scroll down and click on the lake scorecard image. As you scroll down the page for each lake scorecard, you’ll dive deeper into more details for each category.  



To learn more, watch a webinar hosted by Lake Stewards of Maine to hear more from Jeremy Deeds (DEP) about how the scorecards were put together and how to navigate and interpret scorecard information.

New OUR SHORE Resources

Staff from the Maine DEP has been working on a new program - OUR SHORE – that provides guidance and training for using nature-based design practices, also known as “living shorelines”, to protect against shoreline erosion. This program serves homeowners, contractors, resource managers, and community leaders, providing them with how-to information and showcases different project examples from throughout the state that have successfully used nature-based designs. OUR SHORE is also an emerging network of engineers, earthwork contractors, designers, and municipal officials interested in learning and sharing these techniques in Maine. 


In the coming year, we’ll share more information as OUR SHORE develops new tools and new trainings to help you stabilize shorelines in ways that promote quality shoreline habitat with natural materials.  


To learn more:

Read through the OUR SHORE draft manual HERE 


Join an in-person training - Shoreline Stabilization Practices using OUR SHORE - at Lake Environmental Association in Bridgton on March 17th, 8:00 a.m. to noon.

Soil erosion is not only a source of nonpoint source pollution, but it can also threaten structures and other development. Historically, there was a single approach to shoreline erosion: fill the shoreline with rock or riprap without regard to the ecological functions of the shoreline. While this approach has been successful in solving some erosion challenges when done correctly, it creates other problems for waterbodies and wildlife.

This training introduces participants to resources and alternative approaches to protecting water quality and habitat to create resilient and stable shorelines. There are many common issues along shorelines that lead to erosion and instability. Sometimes, it takes several techniques to address the compounded problems resulting from poorly-sited development and land use. Criteria for choosing appropriate shoreland BMPs or bioengineering solutions include practices that cause minimal disturbance while providing maximum benefit. A combination of several techniques can often be used to ensure that the best practices chosen are suited to the specific site. 


Date: March 17, 2026

Time: 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM 

Location: Maine Lakes Science Center, 51 Willett Road, Bridgton, Maine 

Register HERE

Questions? Contact Emlyn Emerock at Lakes Environmental Association.

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