Lake Kashagawigamog is situated within two geo-political jurisdictions. The eastern portion of the lake is within the Municipality of Dysart et al, the western portion falls within the Municipality of Minden Hills.
The lake itself is located in the Haliburton Highlands, a vast region of more than 600 lakes that stretch from the village of Norland on Highway 35 to as far north as Algonquin Park. It is the central lake in a five-lake chain running southwest from the town of Haliburton to as far as Minden. Connected to Grass Lake and Head Lake to the east, Soyers Lake to the north, and Canning Lake to the west, the lake is long and narrow. It is essentially a widening of the Drag River, which flows from Drag Lake into the chain of lakes at Head Lake and out again at Canning Lake where a dam is controlled by the Trent-Severn Waterway.
The lake is comprised of two basins connected by a narrow channel, the southwest basin being a little larger and wider than the northeast basin. Most of the shoreline is developed with cottages and resorts, but these are largely hidden from view by the forest of deciduous and conifer trees that grow right to the water’s edge. Almost all of the granite bedrock surrounding the lake is covered by a thin layer of topsoil, with few rock out-crops, and there are a number of sand beaches. There is one notable island, which is located in the southwest basin and supports four cottages.
Quick Facts:
◾Lake Kashagawigamog consists of 817 Hectares (2,019 acres) of water surface.
◾The five-lake chain that Kashagawigamog is connected to (Head, Grass, Soyers, Canning, & Kash) covers 68 kilometres (42 Miles) of shoreline and an incredible 1,720 hectares (4,250 acres) of water surface!
The Love Your Lake Program
Free and Practical Advice for Your Waterfront Investment
The Lake Kashagawigamog Organization and The Coalition of Haliburton Property Owners Associations are excited to announce a new initiative that will provide you with important information about how to protect your shoreline and the lake environment. This summer the Love Your Lake Program will be delivered on Lake Kashagawigamog and Grass Lake.
What is Love Your Lake?
The Love Your Lake Program is designed to reach out to waterfront owners with property specific recommendations for stewardship action. The program will be delivered by the volunteers of the Lake Kashagawigamog Organization in partnership with specially trained staff. The purpose of the program is to help identify actions that property owners can take that will contribute to the value of their property while protecting the water quality of the lake.
Did you know that a 1m decrease in water clarity has been shown to decrease property values from 1%-6% on average (Boyle et al. 2002)? While a 1m increase in water clarity has been shown to increase values in the range of $11-$200 per foot of waterfront (Bouchard et al. 1998).
How Does It Work?
The Love Your Lake Program consists of a lake-wide shoreline survey conducted on a property-by-property basis. The purpose of the survey is to acquire an accurate picture of the current state of the lake’s shoreline. This is will be done by assessing the amount of natural shoreline on the waterfront. The survey is guided by an established data sheet that is applied to each property on the lake. The Stewardship Technicians will conduct the survey from the water by boat. Under no circumstances will staff be required to set foot on properties. Though for staff to properly complete the survey it will be required that they come within a few feet of the shoreline of each property.
Program staff will be inventorying shoreline structures and natural habitat features. Information from the survey will be used to prepare an individualized stewardship information report that outlines specific actions that the landowner could take. As part of the survey, one photograph of each property (with no individuals present) will be taken to be used only in individual property reports. These private and confidential reports will be mailed directly to the property owners.
- The goal of this program is strictly informative.
- No individual property information from the surveys will be shared with anyone.
- The information will be managed with the utmost respect for the property owner.
- Property owners will receive specific information on steps that can be taken to improve & sustain our lake’s health.
Anyone not wishing to receive a report on their property can opt-out by contacting Gary Wiles by email at president@lko.ca. Please provide your municipal address..
Letters with similar information to this article including the opt-out clause were sent out to over 500 property owners.
Note: Anyone opting out is only removing themselves from that portion of the project that sends out the individual property reports. The entire shoreline of Lake Kashagawigamog and Grass Lake will be surveyed for this project.
Who is responsible for managing the information about lakefront properties?
The Stewardship Technicians collect the information by working with a scientific data protocol sheet while out on the water. That information is then brought back to the office and inputted into a secure database provided by the Canadian Wildlife Federation. Throughout the entire process, the information will be handled in accordance with provincial and federal privacy legislation. In addition, there are legally binding data sharing agreements in place that govern the management of the data and clearly outline the usage and limitations of the information. The Lake Kashagawigamog Organization will not get copies of the individual reports. We will get an assessment of the overall status of natural and developed shorelines on the lake that we can use in implementing the goals of our Lake Plan. All of the directors of the LKO and any volunteers working on this project will be required to sign a confidentially agreement, a copy of which is on an adjacent tab on this website.
What’s in it for you?
This summer you’ll see the Love Your Lake Program staff out on the water conducting the survey in a variety of boats operated by LKO volunteers and bearing the Love Your Banner as pictured on our homepage. Please feel free to approach them with any questions you may have and even invite them on to your dock for a chat. Along with the volunteers, they are your free resource for anything environmental!
Over the winter of 2014 property owners will receive their own personalized property report identifying ecologically valuable features and providing some simple and achievable recommendations that can be acted upon. The report will also feature an extensive appendix with useful background information that expands upon the recommendations and will also point to the contact information for local service providers that will help property owners in taking action.
Important! The stewardship technicians are friendly and non-judgmental. We understand that when it comes to doing our part for the lake environment that we are all starting from different places. Staff feedback and the information and suggestions contained in the reports will always be positive. We understand that all properties may not be perfect examples of a naturalized shoreline. We’re here to help property owners do what they feel they can. We encourage property owners to ask questions and let us know what you love about your lake.
For more information:
For further information about this program, please go to www.lko.ca or contact Bob Carter at president@lko.ca
Click here for the Shoreline Action List
Click here for the ‘Love your Lake FAQ’ by Canadian Wildlife Federation & Watersheds Canada
Click here for the Shoreline Assessment Summary of Lake Kashagawigamog
Click here for the Shoreline Assessment Summary of Grass Lake
Accessing your Shoreline Assessment Report
Online
Follow the instructions in the Love Your Lake letter that you received. You will need your unique survey code.
By Phone or Mail
Phone or write to the Canadian Wildlife Federation
Be sure to have your municipal address on the lake and your tax role number available.
Terri-Lee Reid, Conservation Researcher
Canadian Wildlife Federation | Fédération canadienne de la faune
350, promenade Michael Cowpland Drive, Kanata, ON K2M 2W1
CanadianWildlifeFederation.ca | FederationCanadiannedelaFaune.ca
t 1.877.599.5777 | 613.599.9594
CHA Revised Shoreline Percentages
As a result of further study it was determined that the original method of calculating the amounts for each of the four categories of shoreline was flawed and going forward has been replaced with the method outlined below:
- Calculate the total shoreline length for the lake by adding the lengths of all the properties on the lake
- Multiply the shoreline length for each property by the 4 %’s (Natural, Regenerative, Ornamental And Degraded) for that property to arrive at the actual length in feet of each category.
As an example for a 100 foot long property that was classed as;
- 60% natural – equals 60 feet
- 10% regenerative – 10 feet
- 25% ornamental – 25 feet &
- 5% degraded = 5 feet
—Add those lengths up
—Divide the total for each category into the total lake shoreline length
—Thereby arriving at weighted average percent.
These numbers are to replace the numbers indicated in the Pie chart on page 7 of both the above reports.
Here are the revised numbers for Kashagawigamog (Numbers may not appear to total 100 due to rounding)
| Natural | Regenerative | sub total | Ornamental | Degraded | TOTALS |
| 29 | 30 | 59 | 41 | 0 | 100 |
Here are the revised numbers for Grass
| Natural | Regenerative | sub total | Ornamental | Degraded | TOTALS |
| 48 | 17 | 66 | 34 | 0 | 100 |