Future is uncertain for Evansville's Lake Leota

EVANSVILLE-The large mud puddle that was Lake Leota has dried into a soggy field of tall weeds.

The lake bottom has compacted more than 6 inches since the water was drained about a year ago, but it's still not dried out, public works committee chairman Bill Hammann said.

The public works committee Monday probably will approve spending $35,000 to cut a notch in the sluice gate around the dam to allow more water out. The lake is like a bathtub with a drain 2 or 3 feet above the bottom, Hammann said. "We can't drain it because we need to put the plug lower," he said.

"We're going to move the drain down … that will allow us to dewater it." Refilling the lake next summer is a possibility, but the decision probably won't be made until then.

Finding money to fund a dredging project is an issue. The city can't afford to dredge the lake and renovate the downtown in the same year, Hammann said.

"Main Street is well over a million dollars, so we can't do them both together," he said. "I think right now, obviously our focus is to fix up Main Street."

Once the construction project to rip up Main Street from First Avenue to Allen Creek is done in 2008, then money can be put toward the lake in 2009, he said.

"That's the way I look at it," he said. "It's a business decision how you spend your money."

Estimates range from $500,000 to $600,000 just to get the dirt out of the lake and deposit it in a nearby staging area, said Troy Larson, a member of Save Our Lake and Environment committee.

That's provided the city found partners who would take the soil from the staging area at their own cost, he said.

"The cost would only be that low if those partnerships were in place," he said.

If a contractor managed the entire scope of the project, estimates could go into the millions of dollars.

When the city first drained the lake, no plan or timetable was set because officials didn't know what they would find or if the lake would dry out. Even if the lake were filled and drained and dredged a couple years from now, this year's draining still accomplished a lot, Hammann said.


They found they can dry out the lake out and that the soil will compact, he said. "We've got all the preparatory work done," he said. "So yes, we could fill it and re-drain it, because we're ready now. We'll know what it takes to do the job."