CEDAR LAKE - The Town of Cedar Lake administrators want to get the town back on track with the popularity it once enjoyed as a destination. Administrators are doing this through a few projects that include, a cleaning of Cedar Lake and an economic development project in the town's Midway Gardens area. Town Administrator Jill Murr is in charge of the lake cleaning project.
"Right now we currently have the feasibility study going through the Army Core of Engineers approval process," Murr says. "We are told we should have that back this winter. So my winter obviously is the actual season of December, January, February, March, in that timeframe we should start seeing that feasibility get approved with the Army Core. As we're doing this the design equipment is going through the same processes for approval."
Murr says preconstruction engineering and design agreements would follow the feasibility report needing to be approved. She says preconstruction engineering would be completed by late fall or early winter of 2018.
"And hopefully have construction, which by construction we mean ecosystem work, Murr says. "So, not the traditional construction you see of a building but, restoration of an ecosystem and potentially in late 2019, early 2020."
The restoration of the ecosystem entails removing sediment that keeps getting re-suspended in the lake. Murr says as a result, the lake has so much sediment, it doesn't have enough sunlight coming through the water to support plant life and the fish habitat that's needed. Murr says the lake bottom will need to be dredged and the plant life and habitat reintroduced.
