Hello, readers. This is my first LAKE magazine article since becoming president of Lake Watch of Lake Martin. A lot of friends have been asking questions about the organization, so I thought it might be helpful to start out with some general information about us.

Lake Watch of Lake Martin is an all-volunteer nonprofit citizen group created in 1992 by a lake resident named Dick Bronson and several others who shared his concern over serious threats to the water quality of the lake. The biggest concern at that time was the discharge of poorly treated industrial waste and municipal sewage from an Alexander City wastewater treatment plant into Sugar Creek, which then flowed through Elkahatchee Creek into Lake Martin. Lake Watch’s efforts eventually led to a significant upgrade of the treatment plant, including the installation of a new discharge line that bypassed Sugar Creek altogether and discharged through a diffuser placed at the bottom of the lake, a little south of the Highway 280 bridge. Since that beginning, Lake Watch monitors have played key roles in identifying many pollution issues in the lake and communities around it and having those issues corrected.