Lowering freeman and Shafer

[zappaf19]

This is from the Hearld Jouneral The Monticello paper feb 6th

Water levels to be brought down to help clean up debris.

Doug Howard
Reporter

After watching the Tippecanoe River climb over its banks in early January, a group of organizations tasked with managing the river have a plan to see it drawn down for some spring cleaning starting in April.
"I'd like to see this as a community clean up type of thing," said Daryl Johns, executive director of the Shafer Freeman Lakes Environmental Conservation Corporation (SFLECC), the organization that owns the land under and the shore fronts surrounding Lakes Shafer and Freeman.
The draw down plan grew out of a meeting between NIPSCO, which controls the Norway and Oakdale hydroelectric dams, the SFLECC, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.
"It was agreed by all parties that this would be a good time to check out the flood damage," said Johns.
"We (the SFLECC) are concerned about safety issues this spring, when the boating season starts," he said. "We feel like there's a lot of debris just sitting underneath the water that could pose a hazard, so we want to try to get those things either marked or removed during this draw down period."
The plan is to first lower Lake Freeman by three feet by April 12, followed the next weekend on April 17 by a further three feet draw down. That will be followed by a three foot draw down on Lake Shafer by April 26, then an additional three drop there by May 1.
"The first week, the three foot draw down is going to allow us and other people - volunteers, I hope - to go out actually in the water and retrieve some of that debris, and/or mark it," said Johns.
"Then next weekend, the six foot draw down will allow us to not only get some of the stuff maybe up out of the lake bed, but allow people to straighten up their boat lifts and shore stations and things like that," said Johns.
"We'll be putting three to four dumpsters on each lake during this period of time so people have a place to drop off material," he said. "We know there's going to be some boat lifts and shore stations and other things found and we'll try to make a list of those and get them matched up to the owners."
Johns said as the dates draw closer, locations for the dumpsters will be posted on the SFLECC's Web site, www.sflecc.com.
As is often the case with any activity on the lakes, the weather will be the deciding factor in the project.
"All this depends on how much water (NIPSCO) have to work with, on how fast they're lowered and how fast they're raised back up," he said. "And if we get some heavy rains during this period of time, which is very possible, then none of this will take place."
Even during the lowered window, "We want to caution everybody not to leave equipment down in the lake, overnight or anything, because if we get a heavy rain, (NIPSCO) has got to let (the water level) go - it's gonna raise."
For its part, the DNR will use the time to conduct a study on mussel populations on the lakes.
"They didn't want us to move the dates up any further into March," said Johns, "because the mussels then would be exposed, and they are afraid it would freeze and kill them out."
Starting any later, he said, would interfere with the beginning of the boating and tourism season.
"That's the window that everybody agreed to, and if doesn't happen during that window, it probably won't happen. Maybe we could try it again this fall."
Johns said the SFLECC will be sending out a mass mailing to all SFLECC shorefront license holders to notify them of the dates. "Each homeowner pays $50 a year for the upkeep," explained John Shellcrosslee, president of the SFLECC's governing board. "And we use those numbers for our operational expenses, et cetera, and for the cleanup. The dredging that we're doing is a different funding - that comes from state grants. We hold those in different accounts."
Since the Jan. 8 flooding began, the SFLECC has compiled a list of items reported missing and has served as a sort of clearing house, putting owners in touch with the finders of lost buoys, boats, and docks.
"The people that have found items, we're asking them to tie them off or hold onto them," said Johns. "Then when we get calls of something that's been lost, then we can try to match it up, we ask that person to contact the person that found it. Then they can describe it and make that it's indeed theirs."
Some of the other items found or reported missing include furniture, fuel tanks and jet skis, to name a few.
Only a few items have been reconciled with their owners.
"Some of them, I'm sure, are at the bottom of the lake," said Shellcrosslee.
The bottom of the lake is also the site of the SFLECC's silt dredging operations, and later this year the organization plans on conducting a bathometric study to help determine if January's floods undid some of that work, particularly on Lake Shafer.
"We don't know, but we're fearful, that maybe a lot of silt has come back in," said Shellcrosslee.
"We might have to go back up there and do some more work, unfortunately. When you have as much water run off, coming out of the various tributaries into the lake, as you can imagine, there's a lot silt coming in there, as well. Hopefully, with force of the water, that went straight through. But it's hard to say."

[RACN35]

thanx for the article.....i spent a million hours up there on those lakes 40 years ago-

[Strassie]

Cant wait for them to lower, so I can fix my docks. The only down side is it sometimes takes a year or so for good fishing to come back. When they lowered it 4 or 5 years ago, we fished the river all summer and tore them up.

[river scum]

thanks for posting that zappaf.