The Cedar Lake
Improvement Lake Board passed a resolution on June 23rd to proceed with the
augmentation pilot.
On August 18th a resolution was passed by the lake board to assess all
lake front property owners a one time assessment of $145 per lot to fund the
augmentation feasibility pilot.
This assessment
will appear on our next winter tax bill.
The lake board
is currently in deliberation over a contract with Kieser & Associates for
the work of the pilot. There is every possibility that one or more of
the tasks of the pilot will begin this fall.
Regardless of
the start of the pilot, it looks like the timeline will resemble:
-
Complete
the pilot in the fall of 2010, and if augmentation options were deemed
feasible, decide on which are the best. Deliberate on the
specifics of funding and implementation.
-
Hold public
hearings on the implementation project for augmentation in the summer of
2011.
-
Collect the
assessment in the winter of 2011/12.
-
Begin the
implementation project in the spring of 2012
-
Augmentation will be implemented and in-place by 2013.
As most everyone knows, we have 7 locations around the
lake where we have sunk well pipes (piezometers). Twice a week, volunteers
take ground water readings from the pipes.
This effort started with phase I of our hydrology study
in 2004 to help in determining where we're losing our water every summer,
and we'll continue monitoring them……forever? Well, for a long time.
Our engineering firm, Kieser & Associates, also
sunk well pipes on behave of the watershed management plan effort for the Lake Board. Their pipes are in
the creeks, the swamp, and at the
spillway, and are there to further refine the picture of how ground water
flows into the lake.
The purpose of the well pipes (piezometers) is to determine how ground and surface water moves into and out of
the lake so that we might, through some engineering efforts, control that
flow in a more effective way to minimize our water losses every year. The
hope is that if we can do something with ground water movement, we might not
need to pump as much with augmentation.
Kieser has installed automated data loggers in the
pipes that they have installed for the WMP. Data loggers take water level
readings every hour, and they retain the data for months. They are all
synchronized, and so, looking at the data collectively from them, you see
where the water level was at each one at a precise point and time. This
feature is invaluable.
As I said, our well pipes (14 of them at 7 locations)
are monitored twice a week (sometimes) by volunteers. Readings, obviously,
are not coordinated. So, looking at our data collectively, while of
significant value, we do not see, for instance, where ground water levels
were around the lake at a given point and time.
Lake level
augmentation during dry periods will require a pilot feasibility
study. The automation of the lake piezometers with data loggers
plus the addition of four new piezometers would allow us to pre-determine an
acceptable augmentation target lake level for augmentation during the pilot.
The lake board has accepted a statement of work outlining the activities of
the pilot which includes automating all remaining manually monitored
piezometers around the lake with data loggers, and installing the required 4
new ones. When the pilot starts the 1st order of business will
be for the lake board to purchase and install data loggers for all existing
well pipes and install the 4 new ones in low-lying areas on the east side of
the lake.
Once this effort is in-place, we will have a
comprehensive network of data loggers installed and synchronized throughout
our watershed tracking ground water movement hourly 365 days a year. The
collection of the data from the loggers can be done every few months, or as
needed by a single volunteer.
We will be able to see precisely how ground water moves
through the watershed, allowing the pursuit of costly and sophisticated
engineering, and other projects, designed to improve Cedar Lake water
levels, while insuring that there will be no adverse unintended consequences
to either the lake or the communities surrounding the lake.
