By Carol Coultas,Business Writer

AUBURN – For a lot of businesses that rely on Maine’s 6,000 lakes and ponds, seeing black in their books equates to seeing blue on the vista.

“Our lakes are one of our greatest economic assets and among the cleanest and clearest in the U.S.,” said Scott Williams, executive director of the Maine Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program, who addressed the monthly Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting Thursday. “They bring people here to enjoy them.”

Hundreds of hotels, restaurants, outfitters, retail centers and campgrounds rely on those visitors, generating $2.3 billion a year in tourist and recreation activity pegged to Maine’s lakes and ponds, said Williams. The MVLMP is the oldest volunteer lake monitoring program in the country, having spent the past 35 years collecting data and assessing the health of the state’s lakes and ponds.

Lakes-based employment generates $1.8 billion in income for Maine residents and 50,000 jobs, but municipalities also benefit. Williams pointed out that 50 percent of Mainers get their drinking water from lakes and 640,000 recreate on them.

“But all of this is at risk,” said Williams, whose team of 1,500 volunteers fans out across the state collecting water samples and looking for aquatic trouble.

The threats fall into two categories: water quality degradation due to development and invasive species.

The combination has a “very negative impact on property values and overall economic activity,” said Williams.

To illustrate his point, he showed a slide of a lake in Scarborough that has been infested with milfoil, a plant that chokes the life out of water bodies. The slide showed a mass of green, pocked with white. The white were golf balls suspended by a mat of milfoil so thick, the golf balls couldn’t sink.

Other invaders that the MVLMP crew watch for are zebra mussels, northern pike, spiny water flea and a species of aggressive crawfish. Once these species take hold of a lake or pond, they cripple its natural ecosystem and cause it to degrade.

Likewise, contaminants from development can affect water quality through shared watersheds. Williams said Sabattus Pond continues to battle for water quality, first affected by the agricultural use of abutting land and then by rapid residential development. He said its recovery will be tough to complete, but he’s optimistic.

“The outlook is good, only because of the energy in the watershed community to improve that water body over time,” he said.

He also gave a thumbs up to Lake Auburn, whose water quality is “excellent” and substantially above other lakes throughout the state.

He took the opportunity to invite Chamber members to the program’s environmental center on Maple Hill Road in Auburn and to consider volunteering. More information about the volunteer monitoring program is available at www.MaineVolunteerLakeMonitors.org.