The long-overdue dredging of Columbia’s Lakes Kittamaqundi and Elkhorn could begin as soon as May.
Dredging will remove the sediment that has swept into the lakes from streams and creeks and has caused some areas of the lakes to be only two feet deep.
“If we’re going to continue to have the lake, it does need to be dredged. It’s the way of nature,” said Gail Broida, Columbia Association board member who represents the Town Center where Lakes Kittamaqundi is located.
Dredging “will give you back your water depth, and it will give you back your recreational and aesthetic uses,” said Carey Burch, senior planner for HDR Engineering Inc., the national company the Columbia Association hired to plan the dredging.
The total project will cost about $12 million, said Tom O’Connor, Columbia Association board chairman. Each lake will take between 1 and 1 1/2 years to dredge.
State, county and federal agencies will be involved every step of the way, said Chick Rhodehamel, the association’s open space director.
The specifics of the dredging plans are “very dependent on the conditions and terms of those agencies,” Rhodehamel said.
Burch strongly recommended the association dredge the lakes one at a time, so not every dump truck is used for the project, and smaller firms can compete for contracts.
But the association would need to choose which lake should be dredged first.
Owen Brown representative on the association’s board, Pearl Atkinson-Stewart, has requested that Lake Elkhorn be completed first.
“Elkhorn needs it first. It would be simple,” she said.
And Broida is pushing for Lake Kittamaqundi to go first.
“I would like them to go in and get it over with,” she said.
AT A GLANCE
HDR Engineering Inc. is an architectural, engineering and consulting firm with more than 5,200 employee-owners, and projects in 50 states and 60 countries.
Source: www.hdrinc.com
