Quoting myself, "There are constraints on the management of the lake level that cannot be overcome without absurd levels of effort and expense or damaging results because of the attempt."
Decant, TomC, and LIforrelaxin (sorry if I missed someone) have risen to my challenge to give specific ideas. Some were simple but require foreknowledge of what the weather will be for 2+ months out and would not solve the problem but might mitigate it a bit. Some ideas would require a massive review of water management throughout the water flow related to Winnipesaukee. Any changes to the current setup would have winners and losers, some of those impacts being hard to know, and like the weather, varying from year to year. Plus, as any changes were made, it would likely require numerous $$individual$$ responses to deal with the new setup.
On top of that, the current situation is an outlier. Close to the worst in 40 years. Do we just deal with the unusual conditions once every 40 years or so or put everything into a blender and hope what comes out isn't worse all the rest of the time.
It's a very complex problem and I don't think you can blame DES for mismanagement. I think it is reasonable to request that DES review the situation and consider changes to the management policies that are currently used. Perhaps reset the Full Pool targets a couple inches and retain it longer than mid-June. Yes, it WOULD raise shoreline damage. Higher lake levels in the very active July/August timeframe cause more damage. If higher lake levels could cause increases in Cyanobacteria due to more organic material brought into the lake due to shoreline collapse, do we want to go anywhere near that? All this should be part of the review and might torpedo what I mention and lots of other possibilities.
If nothing else, perhaps DES should be more proactive in anticipating and warning the public about the impact of significantly lower water levels.
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