Draining of Marshall Lake began on Oct. 17.
Tara White, senior fisheries biologist with the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations said that as of Monday evening, the lake has dropped about a metre and a half, of the approximately seven metres in total that it will be drained.
White said the crew working to drain the lake had not reported any problems with those opposed to the draining of the lake.
The Marshall Lake Stewardship Group on Facebook has posted several pictures and comments about the pumping.
“We’ve had lots of visitors up there to see what is going on. A lot of questions and we are just clarifying why we are doing it. Some of the people don’t even realize – they haven’t heard both sides of the story, so it’s just explaining the public safety concern and the issue with the pipe and the dam. That we are just taking the pressure off of the dam basically to reduce the public safety risks,” she said.
Richard and Donna Gottselig own a cabin and recreation property adjoining the lake. Richard said that the government is still talking with his family though he is not optimistic about being fully compensated for loss of property value. He is hopeful that a possible change in government in the upcoming provincial election could stop the decommissioning of the dam. “It is not officially over until they decommission the dam,” he said.
He explained his main concerns as: loss of property value, that access to their property be provided to acceptable standards and, if the dam is decommissioned, that it be removed such that the site is back to what it was originally.
White confirmed the site remediation request, “That’s one thing that they have asked and we said we would look into.” She said a feasibility analysis is needed.
“We ‘re not even at that Phase 2 stage right now,” she advised though.
“Right now we are just at the Phase 1 of trying to address the public safety concern and to lower the lake level to take the pressure off of the dam.”
The plan is to run the pump 24/7 though White said there had been a 12-hour stoppage on the first weekend because of a blocked culvert on a woodlot.
She said it was an old wooden culvert that appeared to have been plugged for a number of years.
After crews cleaned the culvert the pumps were restarted and White expects that the draining will be completed by Nov. 3 or 4.
– Pat Kelly, The Boundary Creek Times