Joey O’Reilly will be working with the Cassadaga Lakes Association to create a “state of the lake” report as well as a comprehensive management plan for the Cassadaga Lakes. Submitted photo

A two-year project to create a comprehensive management plan for the Cassadaga Lakes is underway.

This project is being headed by SUNY-Oneonta M.S. candidate Joey O’Reilly, a Maryland native who completed his undergraduate degree at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, N.Y., with a B.S. in Environmental Science focusing on watershed sciences. He now studies lake management at SUNY-Oneonta through its Biological Field Station’s Lake Management Graduate Program.

The Cassadaga Lakes are made up of three interconnected lakes (and is also the headwaters of Cassadaga Creek) with a total of 217 acres and 5.1 miles of shoreline. O’Reilly will be working with the Cassadaga Lakes Association to create a “state of the lake” report as well as a management plan for the lakes. The state of the lake report will consist of all the data, studies and results gathered over the two-year period with conclusions drawn about what the current state of the lake is in terms of chemical and physical characteristics. The management plan will provide a framework to address major concerns presented by stakeholders for the lakes, including what the concerns are and options to address them based upon the evidence provided in the lake report. The state of the lake report and comprehensive management plan will be completed in 2018 and should provide guidance for lake management activities for many years to come.

Currently, O’Reilly is sampling and monitoring each of the three basins of the Cassadaga Lakes, with a total of seven monitoring points represented by the seven distinct deep spots of the lake. Frequent sampling during the growing season will occur about every other week. Sampling and monitoring include keeping track of dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, chlorophyll a, aquatic life and more. An additional goal of O’Reilly’s is to statistically demonstrate whether certain sampling spots are representative of others to help make monitoring efforts become more efficient for future monitoring endeavors and/or studies.

For more information about the Cassadaga Lakes, visit www.dec.ny.gov and cassadagalakesassociation.com. For more information about the state of the lake report and management plan being done on Cassadaga Lake, visit www.jroreilly.wixsite.com/cassadaga. To contact Joey O’Reilly, email oreijr01@oneonta.edu.

The Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy is a local, private not-for-profit organization with a mission to preserve and enhance the water quality, scenic beauty, and ecological health of the lakes, streams, wetlands and watersheds of the Chautauqua region. For more information on CWC, visit us at chautauquawatershed.org or on Facebook, or call (716) 664-2166.