By Jodi Hausen,Staff Writer

INDUSTRY – About 90 residents at a special town meeting Tuesday night approved an agreement for a new boat launch on Clearwater Lake.

The deal with the state Bureau of Parks and Lands says the facility will cost no more than $20,000, the town will give the state an easement, and the state will control the site.

Selectman Rob Geisser said the current ramp is shallow, making it difficult to launch long boats. Also, it is a traffic hazard, as trailer-towing trucks need to pull into busy Route 43 to back onto it. The new ramp will be less shallow, longer and angled to take care of the traffic issue.

Several residents, mostly ice fishermen, did not support the ramp issue, according to the town’s deputy clerk, Martha Wing. But she said they didn’t understand it.

Ice fishermen were concerned with winter access to the lake, which had little to do with the ramp.

“It’s a control issue,” Wing said Thursday.

The town had removed boulders across the beach to the left of the ramp in winter to allow lake access to large trucks, enabling ice fishermen to get their ice shacks onto the frozen lake. The water at the end of the beach freezes sooner than that near the boat launch due to a nearby dam which creates a current there, Geisser said.

But removal of the boulders caused erosion problems when large trucks drove over the grass in spring. That caused the state Department of Environmental Protection to be concerned.

The department threatened to fine the town if the situation was not rectified, so town officials replaced the boulders and reseeded the area.

“Everything is falling into place,” Geisser said Thursday of the development of the beach and ramp area.

A concrete base for a veterans memorial next to the ramp was due to be poured Thursday evening. If all goes as planned, the monument is expected to be erected in time for Independence Day celebrations, he said.

The monument, costing about $6,550, will honor Industry residents who enlisted in the armed services while living in the town. The granite monument will have a large center plaque engraved with soldiers’ names and pillars on both sides, with a peaked granite cap. It will be about 5 feet tall in the center.

At the meeting Tuesday, voters also authorized selectmen to negotiate the town’s ambulance contract with Franklin Memorial Hospital. According to the hospital’s Web site Thursday, selectmen had sealed the deal.