Bottlemania - Elizabeth Royte [77]
“Okay, but how?”
“I know because I marked Moose Rock out there, using known elevations and working with a transit—do you know what a transit is?” Dearborn speaks in an accusing tone, one he’s never used with me before. I nod, picturing the surveying instrument. “I’ve been watching that rock for fifty years. And when it’s almost at zero, that means water is no longer moving out of the pond into the Saco or into the pond from the Saco.” He pauses and stares at me, hard. “You think I made this up? I’m no dummy.” I nod again, blinking away sudden tears. “You don’t care about the lake, do you? You haven’t even seen it.”
“I have seen it,” I sputter. Has Dearborn forgotten my previous visits, my excursion in his own boat? “I’d like to see the rock again.”
“I’ll show you,” he growls at me, “but I might push you in.”
This remark doesn’t break the tension because Dearborn is serious. He smiles grimly; he’s angry with me now. He thinks I don’t believe him, or that I question his judgment. Mike Dana, who’s been listening to this escalation with dismay, suddenly stands up.
“I’ll take you out,” he says.
We stand on the sandy beach and Dana points at the painted rock, just down the shore. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t know why he gets this way—he’s just so passionate about the issue.”
“No, I’m sorry,” I say, grateful that my back is to the house and Dearborn can’t see me wipe my eyes. “I didn’t mean to make him angry.”
“It’s not you—it’s everyone.” Apparently, Dearborn has been snapping at anyone who doesn’t immediately sympathize with his cause, at anyone who questions his authority. His Lear-like ravings shake me, but they underscore the intensity of Dearborn’s situation. He’s fighting a giant, and he feels he’s running out of options and time. Again, Dana points to the rock. “I have to keep pointing because I know he’s looking at me.”
The lake is low—it is always low in the fall—and we walk onto Dearborn’s dock, which casts a shadow on a lake bottom blanketed in brown algae. “It used to be sandy and clear here,” Dana says. “Howard used to have waterskiing parties.” The ski boat is tied on the right, and the smaller skiff, the one Dearborn built, bobs on the left. If Wards Brook were flushing the pond, Dearborn and Dana believe, the algae wouldn’t be here. The Waite report concluded that the pond’s phosphorus levels were high enough to spur the growth of aquatic weeds, and that reducing spring flow into the pond, through excessive pumping, would not only reduce the already low flushing rate but also allow the Saco River to become a more dominant factor in its water quality. Given the excessive phosphorus levels in the Saco, Waite said, “This change could have a detrimental effect on the pond.”
When I go inside to fetch my bag, Dearborn barks, “Come on, I want to show you something.” He walks stiffly to his old Buick station wagon and we drive the short distance to Dearborn Precision Tubular Products. There seem to be fewer tanker trucks in town lately, Dearborn says en route. “I think they’ve hurt the aqua-fire.” Maybe. It’s hard to say what’s going on underground; Poland Spring checks its Fryeburg wells and gauges monthly but gives data to the town hall annually.
Inside, Dearborn breezes past the receptionist—“Good morning, Howard”—and through the cubicles to the hangarlike work area. “Morning, Mr. Dearborn,” a dozen men in work clothes call out. We tour through the computerized milling, drilling, and boring machines. “We specialize in long parts with holes through them,” Dearborn says. He runs his gnarled hands over tubes smooth as water, inside and out, many of them machined to hold instruments and sensors for use in oil-drilling rigs and nuclear power plants.
Why did Dearborn, so angry with me fifteen minutes ago, bring me here? Obviously, he wants credibility. He’d built this place, with its two hundred employees, from the ground up; he’d invented many of these machines and processes. Therefore, when Howard Dearborn says the lake is damaged, that his pump is sucking air, and that the plant growth