Recreated shoreline benefits touted
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BY STEVE ZABROSKI
Times Correspondent
This story ran on nwitimes.com on Saturday, September 15, 2007
HAMMOND | Col. Jack Drolet stood in bright sunshine on the Wolf Lake shore Friday afternoon, surveying a gaggle of Canada geese and a great blue heron among wetland islands that didn't even exist two years ago.
"It's truly amazing," said Drolet, "what has been accomplished through a single, shared vision of what this lake could be."
Other officials joined the commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Chicago District on the newly recreated shoreline to celebrate completion of a joint $7.3 million project of the city and corps to reverse more than a century of industrial abuse inflicted on the 900-acre, spring-fed lake.
"This is everybody's resource," said U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., who provided the lion's share of funding for the project through his Marquette Plan, an attempt to restore a natural environment in Northwest Indiana. "We will continue this spirit of cooperation to make our area as attractive and vital as possible."
Assessment of Wolf Lake's degraded ecosystem began in 1998. Plans were made to correct shoreline erosion, improve habitats for native fish, plants and other wildlife and to reopen channels between the Indiana and Illinois sides of the lake, clogged since the 1950s by road construction.
Work on the aquatic ecosystem restoration project began in August 2005, eventually restoring 15,000 feet of shoreline and creating 90 acres of lake and wetland habitat through deepening some parts of the lake and restoring islands which disappeared decades ago.
"Some of us remember those islands, and now they're back" said Milan Kruszynski, who manages Wolf Lake and adjacent Forsythe Park for the Hammond Port Authority. "To think this began as a thought, a wish, a dream of a handful of people sitting around a picnic table just a few years ago."
Some of the newly restored shoreline and wetland areas will remain fenced off for another year, Kruszynski said, to make sure the stabilization work has taken effect, and then the entire lake will be opened for fishing, boating or just enjoying the wind and waves.
The restoration also has a practical side for many residents, said Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr.
The equalization of flow between the two halves of the lake resulted in lower water levels on the Indiana side, which should absolve as many as 1,300 Robertsdale homes from federally mandated flood insurance, which can cost as much as $1,400 per year.
The city has hired Burke Engineering, an Indianapolis specialist in changing the flood designation of communities, to lobby on residents' behalf with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Completion of the project should accelerate the process, McDermott said.
Native plants, which filter out toxic chemicals, were reintroduced to the north end of the lake last year, and bryozoans, a species of freshwater sponge known to be intolerant of pollution, were found there this summer after an absence of more than a century.
