Chittenden Reservoir celebrates 100th birthday

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(Host)    Hundreds are expected to pick up trash around Chittenden Reservoir on Saturday during an annual cleanup day sponsored by Central Vermont Public Service.   

As VPR’s Nina Keck reports, the event will also celebrate the reservoir’s 100th birthday.

(sound of water splashing, sound of motor boat)     

(Keck) There are 16 miles of shoreline around Chittenden Reservoir and Steve Costello, an avid outdoorsman and spokesman for Central Vermont Public Service, knows them well.  Motoring slowly across the pristine lake, Costello points to a distant shore.

(Costello) "Yeah, my favorite spot is what I call Back Bay – it’s in the far northern end of the lake.   It gets really shallow there and you can paddle in and see literally hundreds of frogs and tadpoles, thousands of tadpoles in the early spring."

(Keck) Costello points in another direction toward a large tree, that he says is a favorite perch for bald eagles.   On quiet mornings, he’s seen beaver, river otter, ospreys, loons and all sorts of other wildlife.    

(Costello) "We’re at 1,492 feet of elevation where we are right here. There are very few places in the northeast let alone Vermont where you can go out and within a matter of minutes have your own private beach, have a cove all to yourself and to be able to look around and literally see virtually see no development in any corner of the reservoir."

(Keck) Central Vermont Public Service operates a hydroelectric dam here. The site was chosen for a dam because the land was bowl shaped, was fed by streams and had necessary elevation.   Construction took over two years and Costello says CVPS began using the dam to generate power in 1909.

(Costello) "Water creates energy essentially by going downhill.  And when it leaves Chittenden it goes through two or three more facilities and then in to Otter Creek ultimately where it goes through 2 or 3 more facilities on its way to Lake Champlain."   

(Keck)  Enough electricity is generated at the reservoir to power 13 to 14 hundred homes.   About 8 years ago, CVPS sold 2000 acres of land surrounding the lake to the national forest service to help preserve it.  Around the same time, powerboats were restricted on the 750-acre reservoir. Now, they can’t go any faster than five miles an hour. That change angered some speed boat enthusiasts.   Costello says part of the reason C-V-P-S hosted their first  reservoir clean up day in 2002 was to help heal that rift and preserve the area’s beauty.

For VPR news, I’m Nina Keck in Chittenden.

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