Since July 2019, the Town of Whitewater has been draining Whitewater, Tripp, and Cravath Lakes, hoping to eradicate invasive species by freezing unwanted pests, bringing back navigation channels, and improving the health of the lake’s ecosystem. . Now they have begun the dredging process after several weeks of preparation through controlled burning, skimming of snow and vegetation, and laying of wooden matting. Stout Construction started the dredging process by digging the ground, even working at night when the weather is below zero.

The Walworth County Lakes Association hosted a meeting to discuss the multi-year process with the community on February 19 at 11 a.m. in Starin Park.

The trucks at Trippe Lake hauled ¾ full load of lake bottom sediments while the trucks at Cravath Lake were only able to haul about ½ full load. Trippe Lake has better conditions than Cravath Lake. Although the sunny weather may be welcome for others, it does not help the crew maintain the frozen surface conditions. The crew must stop the process when the weather turns up in order to prevent the equipment from sinking into the ground.

The City of Whitewater Parks and Recreation has worked with Trippe and Cravath Lake contractors updating the public on their progress with the removals and future plans.

“As of last month, in January, we started the dredging process by laying down the wooden mats. February here, the last two weeks, is where we started the process of dredging and draining the area. Over the next few weeks we will be carrying out restoration work on the plants by burning them. And there are spores in an area of ​​Trippe Lake, it looks like a mess, there’s no way to get to it, especially trucks won’t be able to get to it. But we will eventually understand. Hopefully we can get it somewhere in an area to be piled up in one of our shelters,” said Eric Boettcher, director of parks and recreation.

In 2017 the lake was very clear and there was hardly any vegetation covering the lake where there was not much clean water. In 2020 and 2021 it became a lake with just a stream with no vegetation while surrounding the entire area but with overgrown vegetation.

“This project started in 2017, you can see it was clear but slowly the vegetation was growing. In 2019 the Cravath was emptying out and then the work on Lake Trippe was not going so well, we have had to add siphons the following year to help drain. In 2021 both lakes were lowered and on January 12 we began the dredging process. We have an overgrowth of vegetation which may be harmful to the community, the lakes, we’ve been talking with MNR to make options on how to remove invasive species, and we’ve planned it in 2019. We planned to cut back by 2021, Cravath and Trippe Lake became a creek , in Trippe there is an overgrowth of vegetation, we have done some removal and restoration with fire, we have also used siphons to draw water from the lake, we had to obtain approval for a dredging permit to the lakes, and we started the trial sus,” Boettcher said.

Crews worked day and night to excavate the lake in preparation for the dredging phase. Whitewater is about to reclaim its beloved lakes.

If you are interested in following the lake dredging process, visit https://www.whitewater-wi.gov/520/Lakes-Drawdown-Updates for weekly updates.