Canary Systems always seeks to be involved in our local communities. As part of this initiative, we work with the town of New London, NH where our home office is based to monitor Pleasant Lake. Pleasant Lake is a beloved attraction and recreational destination for members of New London so it’s vital that the associated dam is monitored to maintain designated seasonal water levels. The town now utilizes Canary Systems MLSuite and equipment to monitor lake levels, local weather conditions, dam gate level, water temperature and more.

This past summer, Canary Systems was  featured in the newsletter ‘Reflections’ in June, a local newsletter for the Pleasant Lake Protective Association. We are pleased to share this article and welcome the opportunity to work on similar future projects!

You can also download a complete PDF of the newsletter to learn more about the Pleasant Lake Protection Association.

In 2008, the Town of New London installed an electronically controlled mechanized dam gate. With the exception of drought or very extreme rain events, the lake level of Pleasant Lake in the summer can be maintained within 2” of its designated summer level of 803’ above sea level. Since 2008, there have been two occasions when the sonic transducer which measures the lake level has failed and there have also been two occasions when the electrical power to the dam has failed. All four instances prevented the dam gate from working properly which led, each time, to inadvertent lake level lowering.

There is an extraordinary company in town called Canary Systems which makes, among other things, systems that monitor dam operation. Conversation with them led to an extremely generous proposal on their part which in turn led to the installation of equipment in the dam house which would monitor the lake level, the amount the dam gate is open, the water temperature and electrical power. This information is sent to a server by means of cellular data. The entire monitoring system has a battery backup. If the power to the dam is interrupted, text messages are sent to New London Dispatch and to the person on duty at the New London Department of Public Works, so that remediation can quickly occur.

This same data is available to all of us interested parties on the pleasantlake.info website. Since the initial installation of their equipment, Canary has added at their own expense, an electronic rain gauge, an anemometer to measure wind speed and a wind direction indicator.

To access this interesting information, go to pleasantlake.info where you will see beautiful aerial views of Pleasant Lake. Doing so will open up a page showing a map of Pleasant Lake, with five red circular icons located at the dam end of the map. Clicking on each one of these will bring up the information mentioned above. It is intriguing for many of us to follow the working of the dam.

We have a very special dam holding back a very, very special lake.