Doug and Jane Conroe Honored By NYSFOLA for Outstanding Dedication to Chautauqua Lake
Lakewood, NY — The husband-and-wife tandem of Jane and Doug Conroe have been selected as this year’s recipients of the Scott A. Kishbaugh Secchi Disk Award. This award honors a volunteer who has shown outstanding dedication to his or her lake association.
The New York State Federation of Lake Associations (NYSFOLA) have honored these two longtime volunteers for their public service. Both of them have been serving as volunteers for the Citizens Statewide Lake Assessment Program (CSLAP) since its inception in 1987.
Jane Conroe has been an active member of the Chautauqua Lake community for more than three decades. She has donated time to public education and service on behalf of the lake. She has spearheaded the creation, planting, and maintenance of a native plant demonstration garden at the CLA headquarters, has served as a conservationist with the Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy for several years, and has coordinated a summer lake walk program at Chautauqua Institution that features lake and watershed topics.
Doug Conroe, is currently the executive director of the Chautauqua Lake Association, where he has been actively involved in aquatic plant management and a myriad of other lake-related issues. He has also served on the Steering Committee that created NYSFOLA in 1983, and continued on as a member of the first NYSFOLA board of directors from 1983-1984.
Over the past four decades, the Conroes have worked as a team to help Chautauqua Lake, and have attended the NYSFOLA annual and western regional conferences almost every year. The pair were also featured in the April 2014 edition of the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC)’s The Conservationist magazine in an article entitled, “My Poor Little Lake.” This article highlighted the issue of harmful algal blooms in New York.
The Scott A. Kishbaugh Secchi Disk Award is named after the DEC’s first and longtime CSLAP coordinator, and was established in 2019 by the NYSFOLA board of directors. This award honors a CSLAP volunteer who has shown outstanding dedication to the program, his or her lake association, and NYSFOLA.
