By Nancy Allen
nallen@dailystandard.com Grand Lake St. Marys has been approved for $350,000 in state capital appropriations funds for riprap (rocks) to protect the lake's shore line.
Lake Improvement Association members meeting Saturday learned the good news from political action committee chairman Jeff Vossler.
This is in addition to $450,000 in capital appropriation funds that were approved for shoreline protection last year.
State park officials want to use riprap to reinforce areas of lake shoreline and around islands in the lake to stop them from washing away.
The state park is a step closer to installing sediment traps in tributaries of the lake after the Ohio Department of Natural Resources divisions of parks and watercraft approved the necessary permits to install them, state park Manager Craig Morton reported. Sediment traps are areas dug out in streams to catch sediment and attached nutrients before they enter the lake. Sediment and attached nutrients run off land in the watershed, flow into lake tributaries and then into the lake.
"We still need to get rights of way permission to work along the stream banks before we can start," Morton said, adding that work could start on the first sediment trap in a couple of weeks.
The first four sediment traps are slated for construction in Barnes Creek near the St. Marys Township Building, in a creek next to the newly-constructed Strassburg Park in Franklin Township, Little Chickasaw Creek on the north side of state Route 219 and in Beaver Creek on county-owned land at the end of the Lakefield Airport runway.
Morton also reported the lake is about a foot above normal pool. |
