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organizations have the appetite to acquire equipment, only to lack staff time to make use of a device. Many discussions I have had with local government officials end with "if only we had time". Time is almost always a limitation in these matters, and one that is usually overlooked in the up-front planning process. I suspect the same would apply here. I got a call from my predecessor -Dick Fowler on Thursday August 2nd which was 1 day after the 3-4 inches or rain we received early August 2nd. Dick had taken one of his typical walks through the Charlie Pond area and found a lot of debris clogging the grates. I have found similar instances at Charlie Pond in the past, even to the point where tree branches were too large to remove myself. My point is that if the GLWMO is considering purchase of water quality sampling devices, where will the time come from to take samples? If time and resources are limited to keep settling ponds unobstructed, where will the time and resources come from to use water sampling equipment? Proper Identification Incidentally, it would be a good idea for RWMWD officials (or others hired parties) to carry proper identification (i.e. business cards) with them when conducting lake shore related work. This is especially true when they are going up on people's shorelines and shooting photos. I received a call from a long time resident asking if I knew why there were people on her property and taking photos the morning of Friday June 23rd, 2006. The RWMWD officials were not able to produce proper identification. This is not to infer that the individuals were not from RWMWD, just that carrying proper identification would be the professional thing to do. It also seems odd that if the purpose of the June 23rd visit was to look for Curly Leaf Pondweed that it would occur on this date, since the Curly Leaf normally subsides by then. Secchi Readings It does appear that water clarity at least as per Secchi disk readings indicate that clarity has dropped slightly over the past two years. Yet this is but a hiccup in the macrocosm of the lake history. Drawing too many "conclusions" for a two year interval is dangerous. If you talk to officials at the MPCA responsible for the CLMP, you will know that there are several areas where measurements can be skewed. For example, if residents take more samplings in July than in June, the averaging will be skewed toward July where the secchi readings are at their lowest. The data complied through the MPCA CLMP only considers data from June 1 through September 30`''. Yet when I take Secchi disk readings each April and May there is no difference in the results across years; i.e., the water is extremely clear, where it is not unusual to see down 10-12 feet.. Similarly, when I take Secchi disk readings in July and August (as the water gets warmer and the planktonic algae increases) there is also no difference across years, i.e. about 29". September and October readings I have taken also do not indicate a difference across years. It is entirely possible that the 2 year decline falls within a normal range of variation, though we should keep an eye on this. 4