(Spirit Lake)– An assessment into shoreline collapses around the Iowa Great Lakes and Silver Lake at Lake Park is pretty much completed. Mike Hawkins of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources says they’ve documented around 70 collapses with the majority of those on the Okoboji’s, with some others on Big Spirit Lake and Silver Lake at Lake Park. He says about 2,600 lineal feet of shoreline was impacted…
“Those have been fairly major collapses where the entire bank has sluffed off and is either at the base or in the water. There’s extensive work that needs to be done to dry to protect the bottom of those shorelines that have collapsed and then some techniques to try to restore some of those slopes so that they become more stable over time. We’re working currently with a number of homeowners and contractors on kind of the first steps as the water levels finally recede down on stabilizing the base of those. The state of Iowa is working with a contractor as well to try to get a bigger picture of what’s happened. In the next few days we should have that and then be able to begin some discussions with FEMA and some other state officials to look at potential resources. Obviously can’t guarantee anything but we’re going to be looking at potential resources either technical or financial to help with some of these.”
And even though no additional collapses have occurred since the heavy rains June 21st, Hawkins says there’s still an ongoing issue with erosion in those areas…
“As we get more rain on top of those exposed soils there’s more of that soil moving down towards the lake. A number of homeowners have already taken steps to try to stabilize that situation with silt fencing and straw waddles and other erosion control matting to help kind of keep that soil in place or at least capture it before it gets down to the lake, which is great. They’re trying to stop any further damage to the lake and also to their own property. That’s the main concern now is to just kind of stopping what’s going on and then starting to look forward to maybe some potential solutions.”
Hawkins says the magnitude of what happened is much greater than in 2018 or even 1993…
“We’ve not seen collapses like this, to this extent, in this area. We had a few smaller collapses in 2018 during that high water event but nothing to this magnitude.”
Coming up in future newscasts we’ll hear what officials are hoping to learn to try to prevent similar collapses from occurring again in the future.
