Why Glen Ellyn might drain Lake Ellyn
On the Saturday before the Fourth of July, handmade cardboard boats traditionally set sail across a picturesque lake in a Glen Ellyn neighborhood.
In the months before this year's regatta, would-be sailors may think their dreams of maritime glory are going down the drain.
The village plans to empty Lake Ellyn as part of a proposed project to better manage the flow of water out of the lake during major storms.
But take heart, regatta crews, the village fully expects the lake will be refilled by the end of June.
The lake could be drained in April or May if the village board decides Monday to proceed with the project, the “last and most important step” in a series of improvements recommended by engineers, Village Manager Mark Franz said.
The work would replace an existing structure at the north end of Lake Ellyn to increase the rate at which water discharges underground.
Water now is released from the lake at a maximum rate of about 50 cubic feet per second. Construction of a new outlet control structure would increase the peak rate to about 95 cubic feet per second, or about 62 million gallons a day.
Those changes wouldn't eliminate the possibility of Lake Ellyn overflowing in major storms, but would lessen “the frequency and duration” if it does, RHMG Engineers wrote in a March 16 letter to Bob Minix, the village's professional engineer.
In 2011, the firm was hired to study Lake Ellyn after it overflowed about a year before and in September 2008. The village board is set to vote Monday on paying RHMG up to $69,000 for construction engineering services associated with the project.
On Monday, village trustees also will decide whether to award a $555,000 contract to a Batavia contractor, the lone bidder for the work. As part of the pact, the village would bill the park district for a separate project expected to cost up to $100,000.
DuPage County already has awarded a $245,000 grant to the village.
The county also has earmarked an additional $255,000 that Franz is confident the village will receive.
The water would go where it normally does, underground, where it then flows into Perry's Pond. Eventually, the water ends up in the DuPage River's east branch.
“One good storm” or a couple of smaller ones should refill Lake Ellyn before the end of June, Franz said.
“We're pretty confident we'll be in good shape,” he said.
The village also bought two homes on Riford Road, one of which has been demolished, where crews will continue to regrade or contour the ground to prevent pools of water and better control its course.
“The house was actually acting as a dam, so we've eliminated that,” Franz said of the former property at 729 Riford.
The park district owns Lake Ellyn and reached a “memo of understanding” with the village that allows the latter to implement some of the recommendations by engineers, Executive Director Dave Harris said.
The park board will consider Tuesday whether to pay for work to clean out catch basins where stormwater flows into the lake on the southeast and southwest corners, Harris said.
Those structures act like a filter to catch heavy debris and sediment before water spills into the lake and they need to be cleaned out periodically.
The park district expects to see some cost savings by doing the project at the same time as the changes at the north end of the lake. That's because it's less expensive to clean the basins when the lake is empty, Harris said.
An estimated $2.9 million restoration, meanwhile, continues at a Lake Ellyn landmark.
Crews are “getting close” to painting the inside of the boathouse and completing the masonry on the interior of a wall designed to protect the one-story building from flooding, Harris said. A stand-alone bathroom also will be built near the park's playground.
The restoration is expected to be done before the regatta July 2, when the park district plans to debut the revamped boathouse that more closely resembles its 1935 design.