The Daily Standard's Nancy Allen reports:
State crews hope to dredge a record-breaking amount of muck from Ohio's largest inland lake this year.
The planned construction of three large holding sites will bolster Grand Lake's dredging program for years to come.
The first is a man-made wetland off the lake's shore at Aquaview housing subdivision. The second and third are dredge material relocation areas (DMRA) on state Route 703 across from Wright State University-Lake Campus and at the corner of Koehne and Schroeder roads.
The sites will be able to hold a combined 1.54 million cubic yards of material, or 102,666 dump truck loads, said Tom Grabow, dredge supervisor at Grand Lake, Indian Lake and Lake Loramie.
The wetland – part of the Prairie Creek treatment train designed to cleanse some of the creek water of phosphorous and sediment before entering the lake – is especially important, Grabow said.
"This here was probably the best thing that happened on our lake as far as a place to put the material," Grabow said of the site, which will hold 770,000 cubic yards of material. "It's kind of set me up for years because it is so big and has so much capacity."
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the work.
The state Route 703 site will hold 370,000 cubic yards and the Koehne and Schroeder roads site will hold 440,000 cubic yards. Grabow noted all three sites are quite large. Previous sites held 100,000 to 250,000 cubic yards.
Dredging success hinges on having places to deposit the material.