Lake reclaimed: At North Park, a treasure is back in all its glory
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Take a stroll on the paved trail around North Park Lake and you'll cover five miles. If you strolled sometime in the last two years, you were walking around a vast mud pit.
That's because the lake was drained in 2009 as part of a $17.5 million restoration project that removed 310,000 cubic yards of silt and sediment from the bottom to improve water quality, fish habitats and recreation.
Allegheny County's largest man-made lake is back, and it even got a grand reopening Saturday with some special public events at the North Park boathouse. The joint county, state and federal initiative was a necessity and long overdue.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversaw the sediment removal, called it an "ecosystem restoration project." The lake, which was completed in 1936, had lost half its maximum 24-foot depth after the accumulation of decades of sediment carried from upstream. The surface area of the horseshoe-shaped lake shrank from 75 acres to about 60 acres.
With this crown jewel now refilled and reopened, the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission will resume trout stocking and warmwater fish management for largemouth bass, channel catfish and panfish. County residents can take pride in this unusual reclamation of an amenity that belongs to boaters, sport fishers, walkers and even snoozers by the lake.
First Published June 12, 2011 12:00 am
