The lake at Winton Woods will look pretty different late this summer. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to let a lot of water out of the lake in order to make repairs to the dam and control tower.
Project Manager Jeff Esterle tells WVXU a wall of the dam framing the water intake area has some damaged concrete that needs to be removed and the wall repaired. The intake screen area also needs concrete repairs.
The Corps will lower the lake by at least 8 feet.
"It's going to look really low. It's a very shallow lake," Esterle says. "It will be a pretty large area of exposed lake bed ... between the shore and where the lake level is going to be."
Work is slated to begin in August. The Corps will lower the lake by 2 feet per day. Esterle says the water needs to be low enough to access the repair areas, but high enough to support floating platforms the work crews will be on.
The work will be dependent on the weather.
"As the work progresses, the lake will come up inch by inch. We might have to draw it down if we get more rain during that work period. If we get surprised by a local storm, we may have to stop work. We may have to re-lower the lake back down to a level where we can access the areas that we're working on," says Esterle. "We're planning this for the dry time of the year to hopefully limit a lot of that up and down of the reservoir."
The greatly lowered 183-acre lake means the Winton Woods Boathouse will close mid-summer, and the lake will be closed to water sports. The floating boathouse will have to be temporarily relocated. One section of the camp ground also will be closed during the work.
The project is scheduled to begin Aug. 1 and run through November.
From the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers:
- Winton Woods Boathouse: Closed July – November
- Winton Woods Campground: Remains open
- Winton Lake Kayak Access: Closed Aug. 1 – November
- Lake Loop Trail: Remains open
What about the fish?
Esterle says the lake won't be completely empty.
"We're not draining the lake. It will be significantly lower, but I think there'll be plenty of room for any fish to find some refuge in some deeper pools," he says.
The Army Corps of Engineers is footing the bill. The Corps owns the lake and dam, but the area is managed and operated by Great Parks. Its construction was approved under the Flood Control Act of 1946. Work began in 1950 and the lake opened two years later. Great Parks leased 905 acres around the future lake to build a park March 1, 1939, but work was stalled by funding difficulties and World War II. A levy finally passed in 1948 and the first portions of the park opened in 1951.
The lake's official name from the Corps is West Fork Lake, but it's better known as Winton Lake, a name selected by Great Parks (for the lake and park as a whole) because of Winton Road. Its purpose is as a reservoir for the West Fork of the Mill Creek, to protect the area below the dam from flooding. The dam is 6.5 miles above the confluence with the Mill Creek.
During the recent flooding, Esterle reports the lake swelled to almost 17 feet. The Corps held the water in the lake until downstream conditions improved, then it was released.
Prior to becoming a park and lake, the area was the site of a saw mill, and later the Mount Healthy Flour Mill, for a hundred years. The Winton Woods golf course and event space — the Mill Course and Mill Race Lodge — were named to honor that heritage.
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