Residents praise plans to dredge Shadow Lake Officials say lake quality has suffered from algae growth, silt accumulation BY JAMIE ROMM Staff Writer MIDDLETOWN - Over 60 residents of Shadow Lake Village gathered at town hall Thursday to hear about plans to "fix" areas of the lake that borders the community. Township Administrator Robert Czech held a public meeting with the township engineer to discuss plans to dredge parts of Shadow Lake and to get a public reaction. "The idea has been bantered about for years," Czech told those in attendance. "We've finally been approved to move forward on getting funding from New Jersey." The estimated cost for the project is $3.7 million, money that officials hope will be given to them by the state. "Parts of the lake are just unusable because of the algae growth," Czech said. "The lake isn't functioning like it should." Silt has been accumulating on the bottom of the lake over the years, which has made parts of the lake shallow and useless for recreation as it has been in the past. Officials have not yet set a date for the dredging to begin. Township Engineer Robert Bucco spoke to the audience and gave the details of how they are planning on "saving" the western third of the lake. "First, we are going to take a bathometric survey on the bottom of the lake to see where the silt is and compare it to '96," Bucco said. "Then we are going to start dredging and remove 300,000 cubic yards of the silt." They will be moving the silt to the Stevenson tract, which is located near Shadow Lake. Bucco also warned the residents that an odor would occur while they are dredging the lake. "There will be some odor problems since we are taking material that has been underwater," Bucco said. "It'll smell like when the tide goes out." He told the crowd that it would be a lengthy process, with the dredging taking about a year to complete. After Bucco's presentation, he opened the floor to the public, where Shadow Lake Village resident Bill Myers spoke about his longstanding attempts to push for progress at the lake and his appreciation that something is finally being done. "I just wanted to thank the mayor and the town committee for finally doing something about this," Myers said. "I have been writing letters to the town for years and appreciate that I have finally gotten through." William Stevenson, a resident of the area for the past 74 years, had some other ideas on how to fix the silt situation. "Until you stop the silt coming in, this process is not going to do much good," Stevenson told Bucco. Bucco agreed with Stevenson and assured that he would look into that situation as well. The meeting closed with 12 residents of Shadow Lake Village individually going up to the microphone to put on record that they approve of the dredging. It was something that Czech and Bucco were excited to hear. "This process is going to bring Shadow Lake back to life," Czech said.