Repairs on Lake Delhi dam officially underway

DELHI — While a real excavator moved dirt away from the remnants of the Lake Delhi dam, hundreds of jubilant community members, many with shovels, celebrated the long-awaited occasion with a symbolic groundbreaking at noon Thursday.

'We're moving dirt. People have been waiting a long time for this day,' said Deb Burger, who like hundreds of other Lake Delhi residents has been without a lake since July 24, 2010, when heavy rains washed out the dam that created it.

'It's been a hard four years. This is a big jump forward,' said her husband, Larry, a 59-year lake resident and member of the lake community's governing body.

'This day is huge. With the digging going on across the (Maquoketa) river, it's a true sign we are moving forward,' said Delaware County Supervisor Shirley Helmrichs.

The groundbreaking signals the beginning of the rebuilding effort's $4.6 million first phase — repairs and upgrades to the flood-damaged concrete portion of the dam.

The $6.8 million second phase, construction of an adjacent earthen dike and spillway, will begin as soon as the Department of Natural Resources issues a required permit, which is likely within two to thee weeks, according to Steve Leonard, president of the board of trustees of the Combined Lake Delhi Recreational Facility and Water Quality District.

In remarks during the ceremony, Leonard praised and thanked the many partners whose combined efforts enabled the lake community to clear a succession of hurdles en route to Thursday's groundbreaking.

Those partners, he said, include the Legislature, which appropriated $5 million to the effort; the supervisors, who allocated $3 million plus half the cost of public access improvements at Turtle Creek Cove; and the lake residents themselves, who raised $1.5 million in pledges and voted themselves a $6 million property tax increase to help fund the project.

Leonard also praised the cooperation of the DNR, which has committed to stock the rebuilt lake with 530,000 fish over a three-year period.

Lake district leaders said the Nov. 8, 2011, referendum — in which residents, by a 95.1 percent approval margin, indebted themselves to help pay for the dam rebuilding — was a major turning point in the uphill battle to get their lake back.

'That showed everyone else that we were putting a lot of our own skin in the game,' said Todd Gifford, a leader in the effort to secure funds for the rebuilding.

Lake officials said they hope the project will be completed this year and the lake refilled to recreational levels by summer 2015.