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Crews drain lake, dredge 40,000 tons to maintain Llano water source

Town Lake in Llano

Crews drained Town Lake on the Llano River in about 14 hours starting Feb. 2 to clear the way for a dredging project to remove 40,000 tons of materials to help eradicate hydrilla, increase water storage capacity and reduce the amount of chemicals needed to treat the oxygen-depleted water source for the city of Llano. Courtesy photo

CONNIE SWINNEY • PICAYUNE STAFF

LLANO — For the first time in more than a decade, Llano residents can see the riverbed in Town Lake.

“It looks like a wasteland with all the tree limbs and everything else that’s in there,” said Llano City Manager Brenton Lewis. “It actually shows how much material has built up over the years.”

In just 14 hours Feb. 2-3, crews drained Town Lake on the Llano River to clear the way for a dredging project to remove 40,000 tons of materials from the lake bed.

For several years, residents have watched the inflows decrease and the depth shrink into the lake formed by a dam adjacent to the Texas 16 bridge in the heart of the city.

City leaders say the long-term goal of protecting and preserving the waterway hastened the step to drain and launch the project.

“What we’re trying to do is increase the capacity around the intake, so we can maintain a longer supply of water,” Lewis said.

Also, dredging the lake will help eradicate hydrilla, an invasive water weed; increase water storage capacity; and reduce the amount of chemicals needed to treat the oxygen-depleted water source for the city of Llano, he said.

The city has contracted with Chanas Aggregate for a maximum 120-day contract for the second year in a row to remove the materials — this time in a different area as the prior year.

Also, workers installed a pump system to catch released lake water collecting in a pond on the eastside of the dam to siphon back into the muncipal intake system for the city’s sole source of water.

Over the past several years, a number of issues involving water treatment and fish habitat as well as storage capacity have begun to worsen, hastening the drain and dredge process, which had not been done in nearly two decades, officials said.

“Most of Town Lake is three or four feet deep, and it’s what you’d call nearly stagnant water,” Mayor Mike Virdell said. “We fight the hydrilla every day from going into our intake system. The oxygen is just completely depleted out of the water. (With the dredging project), we don’t have to put so many chemicals into our water for treatment.”

The lake’s potential depth is 15-20 feet at the foot of the dam; however, the sandbar on the east side of the dam has grown to just a few feet from the top of the structure.

Chanas workers have started moving heavy equipment onto the northwest side of the lake to begin scooping away at the buildup.

Officials would like the project to be complete before the hottest part of the summer.

“This is purely a maintenance issue,” Virdell said. “If you do things a little every year, it doesn’t become an atrocity as it has now.”

connie@thepicayune.com