Winter Flooding Delays Candlewood Lake Drawdown

BROOKFIELD, CT — FirstLight has delayed the start of its annual drawdown of Candlewood Lake, due to continued flooding events throughout the latter half of December and first two weeks of January.

High water flows in the Housatonic River downstream of the Rocky River Pumped Hydro Station, particularly near downtown New Milford and below the Stevenson Dam in Monroe, required the company to store water in Candlewood Lake, the utility announced in a release.

"Unfortunately mother nature hasn’t been overly cooperative this year with the drawdown, as we've had higher than average water flows in the Housatonic for this time of year" said FirstLight spokesman Len Greene.

Additional releases of water from the Candlewood drawdown would have made the situation downstream worse, Greene said.

In addition to being an opportunity to perform maintenance, the annual drawdown also serves to expose the normally-submerged watermilfoil infestation to temperatures lethally cold to the plants. In this matter, Greene said FirstLight got lucky:

"Coincidentally temperatures haven’t been consistently cold enough to impact milfoil growth anyway, so I don't believe we've missed our opportunity to impact the weeds," he said.

FirstLight will continue to draw the lake down to the targeted elevation of between 422 and 424 feet, and eventually return to the recreational depth of 427 feet by opening day of fishing season on April 11.