Above, Rebecca Hanson, executive director of the Newfound Lake Region Association shows the area at Grey Rocks Conservation Area which will soon be the site of $2.2 million conservation center in Hebron. Paula Tracy photo

By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org

HEBRON – Newfound Lake Region Association is about to break ground on a $2.2 million Conservation Center here at the Grey Rocks Conservation Area which will promote lake health education and environmental literacy.

While the deep, clear lake in the center of the state has never had a recorded toxic cyanobacteria bloom, the goal of the association is to keep it that way and inform everyone on how to help, as threats to the lake are growing said Rebecca Hanson, its executive director.

On a breezy day Tuesday, with white caps forming across the lake in Hebron, Bristol, Alexandria and Bridgewater, and summer camps beginning to close for the season, Hanson took a walk on the association’s trail network and showed drawn plans for the Grey Rocks Conservation Center at 178 North Shore Road.

The 29 acres here at the confluence of two rivers were once used as a fishing spot for Native Americans who called the lake Pasquaney. It was later known as “Grey Rocks” a summer camp for young women and then became Newfound Marina before it was acquired by the McLane Family. 

The McLanes cleared away the marina’s six buildings, cleaned the property of its toxic waste from the marina, created a conservation easement on it and donated it to the Newfound Lake Region Association in 2011.

Currently, the property is used for its lovely walking trails. Families were out on its shores fishing, picnicking and using the free, non-motorized cartop boat access to the lake. The site is also a starting and end point for the Association’s narrated nature tours of the lake from its pontoon boat docked there.

Hanson said in two weeks, construction will begin in the parking lot on a new conservation center which will be open to the public to expand education opportunities and strengthen its scientific efforts, which are now done at the organization’s headquarters in a bank building in Bristol.

The center will house a water quality lab, will have stormwater landscaping, pollinator gardens, interactive exhibits and a venue for visiting school children and conservation events.

As of July 22, 90 percent of the project cost has been raised.

The mission of the NLRA is to protect Newfound Lake and its watershed which it has been doing for over 50 years. The association accomplishes that through education, programs, and collaboration with the state and other entities.

The walking trails on Sandy Point have new interpretive signs which outline what people are seeing as they walk along the river’s edge. They outline native flowers and pollinators, forest succession, beavers and their engineering capabilities, and the changing contours of the channel connecting the property to the lake.

Newfound is the state’s fourth largest lake when Lake Umbagog on the Maine/New Hampshire line is listed and is 4,451 acres with some of the deepest waters in the state at 183 feet. It is considered a high quality water source and has about 22 miles of shoreline.

The building, which will be about 3,500 square feet, will be constructed over the fall and winter and is expected to open next summer.

As well as becoming the headquarters for the association and its staff, Hanson said it will also be a learning space for the public with both permanent and visiting exhibits. It will have solar panels and is being designed to be energy efficient.

“Our vision is to create a space that is really going to serve this community and deepen everybody’s relationship with the lake,” she said. 

Hanson added that it will benefit the association’s work of stewarding the watershed and imparting information which can be helpful to secure a healthy future for the lake.

The association has hired two New Hampshire firms to build the new center: Sippican Partners Construction of Ashland and Bensonwood of Walpole. 

For more information visit the website https://newfoundlake.org/