Lovell Lake

Lovell Lake is a 538acre water body in Carroll County in eastern New Hampshire, United States, in the town of Wakefield. The lake is both spring-fed and fed by small streams including Horse Brook. The outlet of the lake, located at the village of Sanbornville, is the beginning of the Branch River. From here, the Branch River flows through Milton where it joins the Salmon Falls River on the Maine-New Hampshire border. The Salmon Falls River empties into the tidal waters of the Piscataqua River northwest of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, then into the Gulf of Maine.Lovell Lake is defined as a "Tier 1" water body and is designated as "fully supporting" according to the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. The Lovell Lake watershed covers 3076acre. Its watershed is currently 64% forested, 14% developed, and contains 37% buildable area. The Lovell Lake shoreline is composed of primarily low density residential houses and camps (87%). The majority of these structures (68%) are within of the shoreline. Although designated as a high quality water, shoreline development and proximity of structures has led to increased polluted runoff that threatens the lake's water quality.Lovell Lake water quality has been measured since 1979 at station 1 and 1989 at station 2. This includes 19 years of secchi disk data (transparency), 19 years of phosphorus data, 16 years of chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) data, and 3 years of dissolved oxygen (DO) data. From this data, the median total phosphorus (TP) concentration in 2008 was 7.5 parts per billion (ppb) and mean secchi disk transparency was 6.3m.