ILWP seeks private firm to prioritize areas of need
The Indian Lake dredging program overseen by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources stands to be more effective and suffers from a lack of planning and forethought, a recent audit from the Ohio Auditor of State has found.
Due to these inefficiencies and the reactive process by which ODNR sets about dredging Ohio’s inland bodies of water, including Indian Lake, the local citizens group committed to maintaining Indian Lake seeks to partner with a private firm that can help better prioritize dredging areas and dump sites across Indian Lake’s eight-square miles of water.
ODNR’s dredging program is intended to maintain the water quality of the state’s inland lakes and water depths to allow boating and other recreational activities. The ODNR dredging program includes not only Indian Lake, but also Grand Lake St. Mary’s, Lake Loramie and Buckeye Lake.
The auditor of state report found that ODNR primarily relies upon complaints from park managers and limited user surveys to plan its dredging activities, but lacks any formal database, spreadsheet or work-flow system to follow up on areas of need. Complaints typically come in via e-mail, the report said, with no follow up on whether action was taken on a given area of concern.
Earlier this year, the Indian Lake Watershed Project established a “Dredge Planning Working Group” intended to focus on sharpening solutions to proper dredge planning, as well as shoreline protection and ongoing water quality monitoring.
Among the first acts of the dredge working group is to seek out a private firm that specializes in long-term planning, according to a public statement from the Indian Lake Watershed Project.
“The goal is to have a firm that can engage the local community, prioritize large areas for dredging, and find solutions to the limited storage areas we have around the lake for dredge material,” Indian Lake Watershed Project reports.
Accurate and focused information compiled by local stakeholders can help improve data inefficiencies in Indian Lake’s dredging program performed by ODNR.
Indian Lake Watershed Project was established in 1990, “to facilitate and promote actions that will improve water quality for the benefit of recreation, agriculture, wildlife, and other uses of the Indian Lake Watershed aquatic resources.”
The work has been successful. Indian Lake waters have avoided troubles experienced at other inland bodies of water, such as toxic algae blooms experienced in the 2010s at Grand Lake St. Mary’s.
A stable, and continuously-improving body of water has led, “to new problems we are working to correct,” the group reports, including the aquatic weed growth — duckweed — which has become a particularly visible problem in recent years and led to complaints of boaters’ difficulties traversing the 5,000-plus acres of lake.
In response, ODNR has ramped up its dredging and weed harvesting activities at the lake, but the recent auditor of state report states that ODNR must take on a more proactive and data-centered approach to its dredging activities if it intends to make a sustained impact.
