Earlier this year the state of Iowa designated $11 million for work at Black Hawk Lake in Lake View as part of a 5 year plan under the Lake Restoration Program. Late last week the Iowa DNR opened submitted bids for the large scale hydraulic dredging part of the project set to begin this summer. Iowa DNR Fisheries Biologist Ben Wallace says proposals came in from contractors from all over the country, and officials were very pleased with the received bids.
It’s now a matter of contacting each company to make sure they understand the scope of the work before the contract is awarded, and once a company is selected the Natural Resources Commission will need to approve the contract at their meeting in May. The dredging project has been in the works for a while, Wallace says, and will be guided by an Iowa State University study which was completed in 2010.
Another component to the Lake Restoration Project is the use of an old spoil site first built back in the early 1990’s. Earlier this spring the old material was removed in order to make way for the new lake bottom sediment.
Often when people talk about lake restoration they immediately think of dredging, says Wallace, but it’s only a component. For long term success he stresses that work in the watershed is what’s really needed. At Black Hawk Lake he points to the huge strides already made in stopping nutrient and sediment runoff into the lake with over 35% of their 30 year goal already achieved within just the first five years of the plan. To learn more about the Lake Restoration Program at Black Hawk Lake click here.
(*For specifics about the Program at Black Hawk Lake open the PDF document for 2015-2016 near the bottom of the page under the Lake Restoration Report and Plan header. Details begin on page 20 of the document.)
