Over the past few years, Canaan Lake, off of Traction Boulevard in North Patchogue, has looked less like a lake and more like a swamp. Various weeds grow passed the surface of the water, algae and moss cover most of the top, and in the summer, the lake can resemble someone’s front lawn. Men fish and lose their fishing lures in the weeds; it’s unknown if they’ve ever caught a fish in Canaan Lake or if there’s even fish to be lured. At this point, it’s surprising that there’s no rumor of a swamp-like monster inhabiting the lake.

However, Canaan Lake hasn’t always looked like a marshy swamp. In fact, it was once a very popular summer destination area – a beach, where many people and their families would spend the day swimming. There was a beach club, various lifeguards, and even a snack bar. People could kayak, canoe, swim, and fish. Traction Boulevard was where a trolley once traveled from the Village of Patchogue to the lake and the houses that surround the area all used to be rented summer bungalows.

Gallery • 2 Photos

Photo by Niemiec Family

A postcard from the 1950s made by the Tomlin Art Company.

Canaan Lake hasn’t been aesthetically pleasing to look at for a while now, all thanks to the invasive species of Cabomba weed and Myriophyllum spicatum, also known as Eurasian milfoil, which are non-native species to the lake. These plants grow well in shallow bodies of water that stay stagnant, like Canaan Lake.

For years people have tried to analyze solutions that would clean up the lake. Currently, Suffolk County Legislator Rob Calarco has established a multi-year program in hopes of getting the lake cleaned up. In an interview with him, he stated, “I’ve been working on this project now for close to twelve years- before I was even a legislator. When I was working as chief of staff for my predecessor, Jack Eddington, he kind of put it on my desk one day, actually that first year I started working for him, and said, ‘we gotta figure out how to clean this lake out.’” So with this, Calarco and his team successfully lobbied and applied for water quality infrastructure money in order to commission a study to find a better method to deal with the invasive plant species. The money granted came from dedicated funds that are a result of the quarter percent sales tax that voters approved, which go toward water quality improvement projects. This initial study was not only done for Canaan Lake, but also the Lower Lake and Upper Lake of Yaphank.

With this study, it was recommended that they try and dredge the lake. Dredging is a process where mud, weeds, and various objects are scooped up from the bed of a body of water. The main focus was to dig out the weeds from root and all so they couldn’t regrow in the lakes. At the time, in 2008, the Town of Brookhaven (which owns the Lower and Upper Lakes of Yaphank) had some money available, so they initiated the process first with Upper Lake of Yaphank. However, Calarco and the Town of Brookhaven shortly recognized that the bottom material of the lake was too fine for the dredging process to work. “It’s kind of like silt,” he explained, “It’s from years of these plants decaying every winter and it creates this kind of mucky bottom of the lake. So when they were trying to dredge it up, it got stirred up and was dissolved in the water. Once it mixes, you can’t unmix it.” At this point, Calarco and his team were just about to start the dredging process for Canaan Lake, but these results caused an abrupt stop to their plans for all three lakes.

After they discovered that dredging the lake wouldn’t work, Calarco and his team hired a new engineering firm to help them decide what the best route to take was. Finally, they decided to try draining the lake.This would expose the materials to the cold air during the winter and ultimately dry out the lake and kill off the majority of the weeds. When the bottom dries out enough, the plan is to bring heavy machinery like bulldozers to the lake in an effort to scrape all of the material out. “Unlike the dredging process, we won’t have to worry about the spreading of material,” Calarco elaborated, “The lake will have dried out in a dormant state and we’ll be able to get it back down to a sandy bottom that the lake bottom once had.” Calarco and his team hope to limit the amount of maintenance to keep the lake’s appearance up once done due to this draining method. “We’re going to see what we can do, we really won’t know until it drains out and partly because the lake is groundwater fed,” he states, “So a certain amount of the water that gets into the lake is coming from underneath, not from above. We may get a very large amount of the lake bottom exposed to the air over the winter or we may find that we won’t.” Groundwater levels in Suffolk County are currently low due to the drought like conditions that the county has experienced in the past two years, which may act as an advantage to the project.

Since August, Traction Boulevard has been closed off from Old North Ocean Avenue to Fry Boulevard due to the start of the project. Calarco and his team are installing a new culvert five feet lower than the existing one, which is why Traction Boulevard has been closed off for the time being. This culvert will have a gate so it can be opened little by little to drain out the lake. This will also help manage the lake level as time goes on. The current construction work is expected to be done by late October, but in consideration of delays, the anticipated date may be a bit later.

While this project has seen both support and complaints, the majority of the community want to see the lake get cleaned up. The community had been actively attempting to control the weeds for a while prior to the project. They tried Benthic barriers which can be compared to mats that one would lay on the bottom of the ground to keep the weeds from growing further. In addition, they also brought in grass carp in so the fish could eat the weeds. But as the grass carp matured, the effectiveness of this method decreased as they found that the fish ate less as they grew. However, the public has also expressed their frustrations with the duration of the project and the road closing. When asked about the frustrations of the community, Calarco expressed, “There’s been various delays due to the reexamination of our plan and other unavoidable situations. Unfortunately, in construction, you don’t always know what you’re going to find, especially when you open up a road like this. While our hope was to have gotten started and be done before the school year started, those delays have caused us to take a few steps back.” Traction Boulevard is the major route of getting into the Canaan Lake area, so many residents are feeling frustrated with the various detours.

While it’s been frustrating for the community to assimilate to these new routes, Calarco’s main interest is to make sure this project has a positive impact on residents. “I don’t want to spend a million dollars of taxpayer money for something that’s only going to be effective for a year or two,” he addressed, “I want it to have a long-term impact. So, the biggest challenge right now is just working through the time that it takes to do this. Being patient and persistent is key.” Additionally, Calarco wants to minimize the impact draining out the lake has on the community. Draining the lake over the winter will help reduce the odors that are released into the air.

Calarco and his team are anticipating positive results with the draining method of the lake. Places in upstate New York and closer to home, like Robinson’s pond off of South Country Road in East Patchogue, have seen success with this draining method. Robinson’s pond’s success, however, didn’t occur from an intentional draining. The pond had invasive weeds like those in Canaan Lake, and five years ago, the culvert collapsed and the water drained out over the course of the winter. On the topic of Robinson’s pond, Calarco stated “For a few years after, the pond stayed relatively clear. So I think there’s real potential.” In fact, the Town of Brookhaven is anticipating to copy Calarco and his team in order to do a similar project with the Lower Lake of Yaphank.

Calarco and his team has been granted over a million dollars in order to fund this project. After the initial study, he and his team made an application to the committee that Suffolk County has that reviews them. As a result, they were successful and able to do the study for the three lakes. They then went through the county’s capital budget process which took some time and effort to get support. In the end, they were successful and now, they have a million dollars put toward construction, and there’s another five hundred thousand dollars put in the budget for 2018. This amount will go toward any costs associated with the machinery needed to scrape the material on the bottom of the lake.

Calarco anticipates that the Traction Boulevard construction will be done before Election Day this coming November. They plan on starting the draining process in mid November, so regardless of the outcome of the elections, the lake will be drained out. “One way or another, EPW has it in their plans and I’m here until December 31st- hopefully longer than that,” he laughed, “But we should be in a place where the lake will be drained out no matter what.”

His team ultimately wants to make use of Canaan Lake again. While renovations won’t be anything extravagant, they plan to create a small park that has access to the lake. This would allow residents to be able to launch a kayak or a canoe or even have a couple of picnic spots. When prompted about the idea of residents having access to the lake, Calarco stated, “Ultimately, the goal is to be able to use the lake in a much better fashion. Once we have the lake in the condition where it is flowing a little better through the culvert, where people can actually get out there with a boat- I don’t know if I would swim in it, but it’s definitely going to be usable.” Calarco and his team appreciate that residents are patient with the construction.

In addition to Canaan Lake once being a beach, it was actually an apple orchard before it was dammed up and made into a lake, according to residents. In the eighties, long after the apple orchard, Suffolk County built Woodside Avenue into the four-lane road it is today. Calarco commented, “When they did that, a lot of the soil washed into the lake and created the conditions that the weeds were able to take hold in.” The Town of Brookhaven once had a reaper machine in the lake to pull the weeds but it would keep breaking down because it kept hitting the stumps of the apple trees.

Additionally, Calarco identified that part of the problem is nitrogen pollution. Nitrogen is a fertilizer and everybody on the lake has cesspools, so their wastewater goes into the ground. It’s heavy in nitrogen and all the wastewater filters through the ground and into the lake, which creates a great environment for the invasive plants to grow. “The county has a program in place to give homeowners funds to replace their cesspools with alternative wastewater systems that reduce that nitrogen output dramatically,” he expressed, “These systems can be expensive which is why we’re giving grants up to eleven thousand dollars to homeowners so they can afford those upgrades.” These upgrades will help reduce the amount of pollution coming from their cesspools and ultimately help the lake’s health.