Mudflats of Lake Tomahawk

Lake Tomahawk is being drained...

The island is  surrounded by mud flats

Even the little creek from Walker Cove is low

The dam is so bare with just tree stumps, waiting to be taken out.

People are even playing within the dried out mud of the lake bottom

The sign says the roots of the trees in the dam will be removed, and new landscaping will be completed by the spring.  Guess what next week is, folks?

At least it's nice that there's no smell from the lake bottom, and lots of folks still come out on sunny days to play around this hole.  After a week of rainy days, it was welcome!

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!

Stop the water running downhill

The natural slope goes downhill pretty gradually.

My downhill neighbor built a fence to keep draining water from sitting on his concrete pad next to his garage.  So there's a foot and a half or more of 4x4's stacked, with gravel in the ditch on my side, and that construction cloth stuff next to the wood...then a fence built on top of it.

Neighbor's lot has been graded until it's almost flat, with a steep ditch next to the road on his own downhill side.

 

The new fence has lots of stair steps, but didn't end up being totally opaque, thank heavens.

Where he needed a privacy fence, he really didn't succeed, because my house is over 6 feet higher than his, thus all my windows look over his fence to where his back door is on the side.  And the rest of the fence is a screen for a blank wall of his garage.  But as for water barrier, my vote is like the native in Out of Africa who told Isaac Denisen that "this water belongs in Mozambique," or wherever it was, and when the floods came, the water took out the dam.  I do hope this won't happen for my neighbor after all this effort.

Of course this effort does deserve to be in Friday Fences HERE!