Volunteers remove 30 cubic yards of trash from Walton Lake

Dozens of volunteers pulled more than 30 cubic yards of trash from Walton Lake and its shoreline along Lakes Road, a haul that showed how much dumping and runoff pressure still bears down on the Monroe lake before summer. Friends of Walton Lake, or FOWL, organized the sixth annual cleanup on May 16, and the debris removed from both the shoreline and underwater areas included automobile tires, derelict articles and other abandoned trash.

The turnout included Boy Scouts from Troop 440, members of American Legion Post 488, several veterans, Village of Chester Mayor Tom Bell, Village of Chester Water Superintendent Gary Green and his staff, Town of Monroe Supervisor Maureen Richardson and Monroe Conservation Committee Chairperson Thomas Lawrence. FOWL said the effort depended on help from Country Deli and Monarca Restaurant in Monroe, along with a dumpster delivered by Interstate Waste Systems with support from the Town of Monroe.

The cleanup matters far beyond one morning on the water. Walton Lake is a 117-acre lake with a 2.4-mile shoreline, a maximum depth of 68 feet and a mean depth of 22 feet. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation stocks it each spring with 3,700 brown trout, and gas motors are not allowed. A 2019 Monroe-Woodbury High School AP Environmental Science study found water-quality measures including dissolved oxygen, salinity, nitrate, turbidity, phosphate and total coliform within the normal range, and noted the lake is used for diving, swimming and fishing.

The lake also sits inside a larger system that carries public-health and policy stakes. The Village of Chester says its water system was established in 1892 and that its original surface-water source in Monroe is still in use today. The village says that source has a DEC-permitted withdrawal of 800,000 gallons a day, while a second source added later is permitted for 1.1 million gallons a day. Walton Lake is part of the Moodna Creek Watershed, which Orange County says covers 115,600 acres across 22 municipalities and was the subject of a conservation and management plan finalized in March 2010.

The latest cleanup also fits a pattern. In 2021, volunteers removed nearly two tons of debris and more than 50 tires from Walton Lake. FOWL has said it continues to monitor the shoreline and lake for debris throughout the year, because the problem is not limited to a single event. For Chester and Monroe, the spring haul is a warning that keeping Walton Lake clean will take more than one volunteer day if the shoreline is going to be ready for summer.