The Lakes

Over the past 6 weeks there has been a lot of work underway at Chaplin Bend, including the construction work on the lakes.  This project involved three phases:  raising the dam on the existing lake to expand it to about 2.5 acres; adding a new 1.5 acre lake above the existing lake; and constructing a wetland and the top of the valley to redirect the water that has flowed east out of the valley to the south into the lakes.

Here are some "before" photos.  First, looking down the valley from the very top (The small pond in this photo will be eliminated in the project):  

Then, the view looking back up to the site from which the first photo was made.  The site of the wetland is the weedy area in the valley.

Here's a view from further down the valley.  The water in the middle lake will come just to the foot of the larger tree in this photo.  You can make out the existing lake in the distance.

And here's a view looking back up the valley from about the place where the new dam for the middle lake will be.  The large tree in the distance is the same tree in the previous picture.

Here are a couple of views of the existing dam and lake:

Easy to see in that last photo that the existing dam was pretty poor (no spillway and not much freeboard) and heavily eroded.  Although it didn't leak, it needed to be repaired.   The new dam will be much higher and stronger.  

Here's a brief video from my lake guy documenting the "before."

I'll post more photos of the construction process later.