(Spirit Lake)– A fundraising campaign is underway to restore Turtle Lake, a vital waterway connecting Miller’s Bay, Emerson Bay and Spencer Beach on West Lake Okoboji. Larry Harden serves on the Save Turtle Lake Committee. He tells KUOO news Turtle Lake, near Crescent Beach, was created in the early 1900’s as part of a canal system and has been steadily degrading…
“Sediment has built up over that 100 plus years. It actually serves as kind of a buffer when you’re looking at sediment going out into West Lake Okoboji. It’s a retaining area for that and it’s almost filled up now, it’s navigation is getting very, very hard in there and our goal is to restore the lake to its original depth and preserve it for the future.”
Harden says the project will consist of dredging and some lakeshore restoration…
“The dredging will take all the sediment out which will be hauled away. A local farmer has agreed to accept the sediment, and then we are also doing shoreline restoration so that there won’t be a continuation of the shoreline erosion going into Turtle Lake.”
Harden adds they’ve been in contact with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources on the project…
“They’re very supportive of the project, they recognize that the fishery has deteriorated in Turtle Lake and so they’re advising us on the proper methods and what we need to do to make sure that we do it properly that it will restore the habitat that was originally part of that system.”
Harden says they’ve already raised a little more than $350,000 of the $750,000 goal. He says they hope to have the rest of it raised by the end of December…
“What we’re hoping is that by the end of the year we’ll have that because we need to get the dredger to have that on his calendar, to do the dredging in the fall of 2025, so we need to inform him by January of ’25 and so we’re hoping by the end of the year we’ll be able to secure the additional funding we need so we can get the dredger online and on his schedule to do the work.”
He says the contributions won’t actually be collected until after the amount needed is actually raised…
“What we’re doing is we’re just accepting pledges at this point because we’re not going to collect these pledges until we know we’ve got enough funding secure to go forward with the project.”
