Instead of a membership meeting in November, a tour of the Virginia Beach Pumping Station located on Pea Hill Creek has been arranged for Wednesday, November 6, 2024. Virginia Beach has allowed two separate one-hour tours with each tour being limited to twenty participants. The first tour will begin at 10:30 am, and the second one will begin at 1:30 pm. People interested in attending will need to RSVP to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 252-586-6577, and priority will be given to current members of the LGA on a first-come, first-served basis. If there are still spots available at the end of October, then the tour will be open to the general public. The Virginia Beach pump station is located at 210 Beddingfield Way, Valentines, VA 23387.
Living on Lake Gaston means having aquatic plants growing along the shoreline and in the water as well. It's good to know something about aquatic vegetation such as, is it desirable vegetation for fisheries, wildlife and water quality or is undesirable vegetation? Not everyone can identify aquatic plants without some tools to help with the identification. Many times folks will say "we've got lilly pads growing in the water", but not every floating aquatic plant is a lily pad! The attached LKG Aquatic Plant ID Booklet is intended to help folks identify what aquatic vegetation is present in the water around their dock, shoreline and elsewhere around the lake. Take a look and see what aquatic vegetation you can identify in LKG!
The Lake Gaston Association held its monthly membership meeting on Wednesday, September 4, 2024, at 9:30 a.m. at the Lake Gaston Baptist Church. The guest speakers were John Giese - Director, Communications, Pollution Response & Emergency Preparedness, Health & Safety, and Holly Brown - Program Specialist, Office of Pollution Response & Emergency Preparedness, both from the Virginia Dept of Environmental Quality; and Wesley Marshall - Environmental Health Manager, Sr., from the VA Dept of Health.The three officials discussed the recent South Hill Warehouse fire and the resulting recreational and fish consumption advisories that affected the Lake Gaston community.
The meeting was recorded and can be viewed by clicking on the link above this article.
The video from the August 8th monthly membership meeting is available for viewing on the LGA's YouTube channel. Please like the video and subscribe to the channel to be notified when new videos are posted.
No one wants to jump off a dock, run a jet ski, a boat, a paddle board, or kayak into one of these. Multiple fish attractors recently "washed up" near a boathouse in Windward Shores (see photo).
Using old Christmas trees, or manmade material such as PVC pipe to create fish attractors is not uncommon. Ensuring that these structures do not pose a safety issue to recreational users is an issue. For this reason, we discourage any and all fish attractors to be placed in Lake Gaston.
While Dominion Energy owns the shoreline and the lake floor, the appropriate State Agencies (NC Wildlife Resource Commission & VA Dept. Wildlife Resources) have responsibility for management of the fishery. Dominion will not give permission to any individual or group to place fish attractors in Lake Gaston. They recognize that this is a potential safety issue for recreational users. They will refer these requests to the state agencies.
The Lake Gaston Association (LGA) is opposed to the placement of fish attractors due to the mentioned safety concerns. We have asked that NC and VA agencies deny any requests to place fish attractors in Lake Gaston. We realize that in certain special circumstances state agencies or their partners may deploy fish attractors for research purposes and that these will be placed in adequate depth, secured, and identified with a buoy.
Lake Gaston recreational users all share a common interest for safe use of the lake. For this reason and the safety of all, we discourage the practice of deploying fish attractors.
