Lake Delton to stay dry for the rest of the season.

[TheMightyFavog]

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=760870

Lake Delton - As engineers and experts discussed the monumental challenges of fixing a lake that drained through its breached shoreline, one aspect of Lake Delton's immediate future was clear Tuesday: The village's namesake will be dry this summer.

"The lake won't be filled this year," said village trustee and well-known businessman Tom Diehl, who made official the words many people didn't want to hear. "But it will definitely be back next season."

Engineers must first redirect Dell Creek, which brings water to Lake Delton from Mirror Lake, because the creek is now running straight through the newly carved, 400-foot wide chasm into the Wisconsin River, Morton said. The creek is supposed to flow out to the river over Dell Creek Dam.

Once engineers figure out how to redirect the stream into its original channel, the breached area will dry and crews can repair the gash that cut a swath through county Highway A. Just how that will be done has not been decided.


This is not good. This part of Wisconsin is VERY dependent on the tourist trade. Lake Delton was home to a number of resorts, a popular water ski show and was one of the stops on the Duck tours. Lake Delton was also a pretty good place to go fishing, boating, and canoeing as well. As if the region does not have enough problems with soaring gas prices keeping tourists away, now the draining of Lake Delton is making things a lot worse. Hundreds of jobs and livelihoods will be ruined by this disaster.

Hopefully, engineers will be able to minimize the economic impact of this disaster by seeing to it that Lake Delton is refilled as soon as possible. As for how long it would take the lake to refill once repairs are complete... Let's see, back in the 80s, I think the Army Corps of Engineers drew down the lake by 8 feet to do some repair work on one of the dams. The lake, which has an average depth of 10 feet was refilled by the inflow from the creek feeding the lake in about two weeks. Once they get the washout repaired and install some safety measures to make sure this never happens again, my guess is that it might take about a three or four weeks to refill the lake. I'm sure the Wisconsin Department of Natural resources will also restock the lake with fish once everything's finally back on the up and up.