Friday, April 11, 2003
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Friday, April 11, 2003 |
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Lake Peachtree dredging operation begins; will put Drake Field area off limits By JOHN
MUNFORD
Instead of seeing the bottom of Lake Peachtree, passersby in coming weeks will see two large "boats" floating on the water as a project to dredge the silt from the bottom of the lake begins. The boats, actually called "dredges," will have pipes attached to them so they can pump the silt to a staging area on nearby Drake Field so it can dry out and be trucked off, said Ron Meyer of Dredge America, one of the subcontractors on the project. The silt will be pumped out at a rate of 4,000 gallons per minute, Meyer added. Project officials estimate that the operation will eventually take up all of Drake Field so it can be used as a holding pond for all the water and silt that will be pumped from the lake. All the water will eventually be returned to the lake, Meyer said. An estimated 20,000 cubic yards of silt will be removed from the lake bottom. Although the lake is owned by Peachtree City, the county has an agreement to use the lake as a drinking water reservoir; part of that agreement calls for the county to pay for the periodic dredging of the lake. The dredge operators will have a set of plans indicating how deep and wide they need to dredge in certain areas of the lake. The entire project is expected to take 35 days, but Meyer said the company would "try and beat that." Meyer said the lake's fish should also be safe during the dredging operation, since he has never seen the machines "suck up" fish. The Fayette County Commission decided to spend an extra $174,000 to avoid using a dredging process that would involve drastically lowering the level of the lake. In addition to keeping the water system from taking the reservoir out of commission, keeping the lake levels up also helps the lake's environment. The water system had plenty of money in a separate account to perform the operation, officials noted. The account consisted of funds collected in water bills.
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