Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Sandbag update

Last week we had hoped to plug the holes in our lake with sandbags. We actually had the first few bags loaded in our jonboat and were ready to go. Then our divers came up to the surface with bad news. Silt had covered the holes where we needed to place the sandbags. Silt, the consistency of mayonnaise, has been migrating down the steep sides of the lake, pulled down by gravity and washed in with rain and getting deeper and deeper into the bottom of the lake. The silt has slowed the exodus of water from the lake, but has not seemed to have much effect on the water loss.

We have hydrologists and other engineers studying our problem and working toward a thoughtful and responsible solution. We'll keep you updated here in the meantime.

Enjoy some pix we took recently as we GPS'd the around the lake's edge - sometimes we had to wade through mud as deep as our waists. You can see the we found a lost boat among other things that included a variety of beer cans dating back about as far as beer cans go, and some interesting shapes and patterns from the recently dried mud higher up the receding shoreline. Notice the rings in the last picture - they were fish beds that dried up.

1 comment:

Chuck said...

Back in 1980 or so, while doing some research on Mt. Lake for the Virginia Tech Biology Dept., I lost an "Alpha Water Bottle" over the side of my boat. It is a device used for taking deep water samples. I tell my students that story to this day - about how you should check your rope BEFORE you lower your sampling equipment! If anyone finds it - let me know - that would be really cool. It looks like this: http://www.ecoenvironmental.com.au/eco/images/van_dorn_sampler.jpg