Work Begins On ShorelineWINONA LAKE – A project to design and install bank stabilization measures along approximately 1,000 feet of shoreline in Winona Lake began last week, after being in the works for a couple of years.
It includes about 500 feet of the Winona Lake shoreline and 500 feet of Cherry Creek within Limitless Park. A rain garden is also being engineered to absorb parking lot runoff.
The Watershed Foundation (TWF) and Winona Lake Parks staff selected Cardno to design and install the measures.
At the town council meeting Tuesday, TWF Executive Director Lyn Crighton updated the council on the project.
“At the Limitless Park, here right next to the beach, I was at the park a couple of years ago and I noticed two pollution problems occurring there. … One problem was the seawall, the old seawall. Sections were concrete, crumbling and failing, and in other sections there had been stone put in, but it also was failing, so that was letting erosion go back into the lake and, also, not doing anything to reduce that wave energy from the boats hitting the shoreline and going back into the lake,” she explained.
In response, one part of the project was to completely redo the shoreline from the beach to Cherry Creek. That will involve glacial stones being placed along about 350 feet of shoreline. Then about 10 feet of native plants will be placed along the shoreline to help alleviate the other pollution problem: goose poop.
“We built this amazing park for people of all abilities, and then the geese found it and loved it, too, and was really causing a public health problem with all the amount of poop there,” Crighton said.
She said the plants will be about knee-high and of various shapes, sizes and colors. “It will look very pretty but they will deter the geese from hanging out there. Just a beautiful solution to the pollution there at the park,” she said.
While they were there at the park, Crighton said the consultants noticed a long amount of sediment building a sandbar out into the lake from the mouth of Cherry Creek.
“While we’re not doing anything about the sediment that’s in the lake, our role, remember, is to reduce the pollution coming in. So we’re actually going to restore the stream banks of Cherry Creek from the bridge to the lake. And what we’re doing there is actually going to narrow that channel. By putting these rocks into the channel at a certain angle, it’s actually going to rebuild the sides of the stream banks and then we’re actually planting bushes and shrubs and plants along the stream banks to hold them in place so we won’t be losing so much of the creek as well,” she said.
The removal of the seawall and installation of rocks – what Crighton called the hard engineering part of the project – will be done this year. All of the plants will be put in during the spring.
“It’s a really good thing we’re doing for Winona Lake and the community,” she said.
Crighton also noted that they partnered with Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams at Grace College on part of the project. Grace students did a survey of the amount of goose poop this past summer and will do another survey next summer.
“So we’ll actually have research showing the improvements that were made,” she said.
