Black Mountain

A grey spring day at Lake Tomahawk, Mar 22, 2024

Monday, March 9, 2015

Mud in drained lake

To work on the Lake Tomahawk dam, where trees have been removed, and now their stumps and roots must come out, and now the lake itself has been drained.

First noticed last week, Thurs. night, I returned in daylight on Friday and again on Saturday.
This is the mechanics of the drain, which I suppose is concrete running through the earthenware dam.


You can see the chute of the regular spillway is dry, since it takes water only from the normal height of the water.  Look to the far right near that black plastic barrier, and you can see where the water is coming out from under the dam, then flowing over to the stream under the roadway, (and on following photos.)


The steady stream must mean a valve is controlling it.  I do wonder about the fish that were in the lake...do they go through the valve also?

Lake level on Friday, March 6, 2015.  Ducks are still feeding in the water, or swimming in the middle...

Or taking a siesta.


By Saturday afternoon the north end of the lake is almost dry, with just a few streams going into the center and south end near the dam.

Geese are trying to feed in what water is left, and these are goose footprints.

They had mud-caked feet and legs...and their leader decided to walk down the lake bed to where water was deep enough to swim...

like walking on a beach, (for us humans at least) they figured out pretty quickly that drier dirt was easier to walk on than the wet muddy areas...

Here the Canada Geese are happy to float on water again!

I asked a fellow human walker on Sat. if he'd seen the last time the lake was drained, and he said no.  I said I'd also missed that...which was why I was taking pictures this time.
He then said he'd heard that they were going to dredge it this time. 

I haven't come up with incentive to go look for a few days.
The spring housecleaning bug has hit me.  So I've been taking curtains down and washing them, and since it's a rainy day (off and on) that's a good thing to be doing.  I sure don't have energy to also go for a walk!

4 comments:

  1. I remember when the trees came down. We have a man made lake, large, that will never survive the Iowa topsoil washing into it. The partially drain and continue dredge from a boat every year.

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  2. Barbara -- From your photos and description it sounds like public works has taken on quite a project. What I don't understand is why they need to drain and dredge? Is this a municipal lake? From your past photos it was such a pretty little lake. -- barbara

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  3. Very interesting and I liked your photos. Thanks for visiting my poem. I liked your interpretation of it.

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  4. The news was publicized in Feb. that the trees had to be removed "in case they got sick" so the dam wouldn't have problems whenever that might happen, and the dam would be rebuilt at the same time. In order to do that, the lake needed to be drained. Here was my post about it. http://blackmountainbarb.blogspot.com/2015/02/trees-off-dam.html

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