Lake Buel

Lake Buel
September on the lake
Location	Monterey / New Marlborough, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States
Coordinates	42°10′10″N 73°16′30″W / 42.16944°N 73.27500°W / 42.16944; -73.27500
Basin countries	United States
Surface area	196 acres (79 ha)
Average depth	20 ft (6.1 m)
Max. depth	42 ft (13 m)
Surface elevation	908 ft (277 m)
Settlements	Monterey, New Marlboro

Lake Buel is a 196-acre (0.79 km²) great pond in Berkshire County, Massachusetts just south of Route 57 and east of Great Barrington. It is surrounded by over one-hundred summer homes and a few dozen year-round homes in about a dozen separate, tight-knit neighborhoods, each with its own private or semi-private road. The roads do not interlink.

The lake is named after Samuel C. Buel of Tyringham, Massachusetts who saved people from drowning on the lake (called at the time Six Mile Pond) on July 23, 1812.

The northern shore of the lake is in the town of Monterey and the southern shore is in New Marlborough. There is a paved boat ramp on the northwest shore that is owned by the Public Access Board and managed by Forests and Parks and Fisheries and Game. A portion of the Appalachian Trail crosses over a breached mill dam along the northern inlet.

The mean depth is 20 feet (6.1 m); the maximum depth is 42 feet (13 m). The Lake Buel watershed encompasses 3,268 acres (13.23 km²). At times the Konkapot River Basin becomes part of this watershed. The lake's water is well-buffered and hard with a pH between 7.8 and 8.6. This hardness and alkalinity suggest that the lake generally safe from the effects of acid rain. The lake is eutrophic and mesotrophic: eutrophic because of macrophyte production and hypolimnetic metabolism; mestrophic because of total phosphorus content and summer phytoplankton productivity. The normal full water elevation of the lake is 908 feet (277 m). The flood elevations for the 10-year and 100-year floods are 911.5 feet (277.8 m) and 913.6 feet (278.5 m).