Brewster Park

Welcome to the Mirror Lake Watershed Walk!

This is a self-guided tour of the western portion of the Mirror Lake watershed brought to you by the Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute in partnership with Northwood School.

This is Brewster Park, a recently redesigned park here in Lake Placid. While providing lovely views of Whiteface Mountain and Mirror Lake, this small park also houses important features of stormwater runoff management. Why would we need to manage stormwater runoff? Runoff often drains into the lake, causing pollutants like oil and road salt to impact the ecosystem here.

You may be thinking, how is road salt a pollutant? Too much road salt in a waterbody can seriously alter the ecosystem of that waterbody. For example, there was so much road salt build up in Mirror Lake, that it changed the density of the water. The water with the road salt sank to the bottom and made it hard for fish for survive because there was less oxygen down there.

Lake Placid has been installing new systems to help mitigate the runoff, and since then, the lake has been recovering which is great for the fish and for us! You’ll learn more about these systems throughout the walk.

Your next stop is Mid's Park, right next to Eastern Mountain Sports.