About forty miles south of Rochester is Hemlock Lake, a seven-mile-long Finger Lake.
Hemlock is a very special body of water. Its shorelines are totally undeveloped, except for the City of Rochester’s water infrastructure on the lake’s north shore. You see, for over a century, Rochester has not only drawn the lake’s pristine water for its citizens–it has also protected the land around the lake, meaning water and landscape largely unchanged from over a century ago.
I took my kayak to Hemlock Lake–with the City of Rochester’s required permit in my pocket–and within a few strokes from the shoreline wondered why I don’t do this every other week instead of conventional psycho-therapy. As I paddled up the mesmerizing, winding Springwater Creek that feeds the lake from its south end, I got to thinking about how this beautiful but small lake–and the modest Springwater Creek–have been supplying much of a mid-sized city with the highest of high-quality water for over a hundred years. I got to thinking about my long-hot-shower vice; the constant flushing of this water down toilets; the sending of this water down drains with soaps and shampoos, detergents and cleaners, a
nd all the other myriad goops of life.
As I paddled back out Springwater Creek into Hemlock Lake, I went to the southwest shore to stand amidst the trees for a few minutes. Because it only took ten minutes to paddle back from there across the lake to the takeout on the southeast shore, I was reminded again of Hemlock’s profound finiteness.
The leaders of this community often extol the copious quantities of available fresh water as an asset that makes Greater Rochester more competitive and more secure than other regions. Given the fact that Hemlock Lake can be significantly and visibly drawn down in drier years by thirsty Rochester–and given that our other drinking water option, Lake Ontario, is seemingly as full of contamination concerns as it is full of water–we should not be seeing our fresh water as endless. We should, instead, see it as priceless.
See Hemlock Lake via these two links:
Aerial of Hemlock showing Springwater Creek at south end (photo courtesy City of Rochester)
On-the-water view (photo courtesy City of Rochester)
water conservation should be done because we are already having some water shortage these days’;`
there is always a need for water conservation specially these days where natural reources are scarce:;,
we must also conserve water even if we have lots of them-*~