Otsego Lake Festival

The Otsego Lake Festival is sponsored biannually by the Otsego County Water Quality Coordinating Committee, a coalition of government agencies and private organizations working to ensure that Otsego County residents enjoy the benefits of clean water.

Although the Lake Festival is not a fund-raising event, per se, officials had no trouble measuring the return on their investment.

"We can quantify success to some degree based on attendance and how much exhibitors were able to interact with members of the community about their work," explained O'Handley. "Certainly, we all had a busy day - which means that a good deal of information was relayed."

"Any time we can make people more aware of the work taking place in our communities, there is the opportunity to gain greater interest and support, and involvement," she continued.

The WQCC is a coalition of government agencies and private organizations working to ensure that Otsego County residents enjoy the benefits of clean water. The WQCC functions as a sub-committee of the Otsego County Soil and Water Conservation District. All of the groups under the WQCC umbrella are working to implement the Otsego Lake Management Plan, the primary goals of which are to ensure the quality of drinking water drawn from the lake for both public and private water supplies, and to preserve the lake's natural beauty as well as its fishing resources.

By organizing the Otsego Lake Festival, the WQCC hopes to engender an appreciation of this county's key natural resource and to educate the public about programs protecting Otsego Lake.