Shoreline Stabilization Work Underway On North Side Of Silver Lake
Shoreline Stabilization Work Underway On North Side Of Silver Lake
March 25, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Lake Park)– Work to stabilize more than 4,000 feet of shoreline on the north side of Silver Lake at Lake Park is underway. Mike Hawkins, a Fisheries Biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources tells KUOO news the project is the result of a decline in water quality in recent years due, in part, to an estimated 1,600 pounds of phosphorous entering the lake annually due to shoreline erosion…
“We’re stabilizing that shoreline in places where it needs to be stabilized and also having to re-build some slopes where some of those banks have collapsed. In doing that we’re also opening up the canopy, the tree canopy there, trying to increase the amount of sunlight that can get to that slope and allow some grasses and forbes to grow underneath of there, do some prairie restoration, so a lot of the kind of non-native trees are being removed and the canopy opened up, so a lot of the bur oaks and other native trees are being left in place. It’s going to look a lot different. I think everyone’s pretty excited about the project. It’s going to look really nice when it’s done, but also function a lot better to help stabilize that shoreline.”
Hawkins adds some riprap is also part of the project, along with a natural erosion netting that will be in place until the vegetation is established…
“We’d expect that the project will run into next winter. We should see that getting wrapped up sometime next winter or spring. That’s the goal. Mother Nature will, of course, dictate a lot of that schedule. We’ll be doing a lot of work right down at the water’s edge and so a lot of that is very tedious and time intensive work that they’re going to be doing down there, and re-building the tow, putting some rock in at the shoreline and then re-building the slope.”
The project has an estimated cost of just under $1 million. Hawkins says some similar work is being planned in a couple of years now in the area of Trapper’s Bay State Park. He says the shoreline stabilization is part of a much larger project to restore Silver Lake…
“That larger project is also addressing inputs from the watershed and also some shoreline stabilization that needs to be done on private shorelines there. And I would encourage anyone with a home on Silver Lake that’s experiencing some erosion or some problems with their shoreline to contact our offices here and we can make site visits and advise them on proper techniques and methods to try to stabilize those shorelines as well. This project is all on public property but we’re definitely interested in working with private individuals that have had issues with shoreline erosion.”
The current work has resulted in the temporary closure of an access road on the northwest side of the lake.
