Giovanni Garcia held
out his
hand to show the day's take from the dried bottom of Tempe Town Lake.
"It's
about $5,'' he said of the muck-covered coins he pulled from his pocket,
gathered during a leisurely stroll with Katie Valenzuela
on Wednesday afternoon.
The Mesa
residents walked along the dry lake bed not far from the wall that
separates it from Tempe Beach Park, taking advantage of a rare
sight revealed after the water was emptied to
complete work on a new dam at the west
end of the lake.
Like
thousands of others, Garcia and Valenzuela are regular visitors to Tempe
Town Lake, which has been closed to activities since Feb. 12, when the
city began pumping the water into a nearby Salt River Project canal.
City
officials say work is on track to complete the dam this
week, and water will begin filling the lake bed on Tuesday.
It should take about
two weeks to add 880 million gallons of water back into Town Lake,
keeping the city on track to reopen the popular attraction for recreational
use by April 30, said Kris Baxter, a city spokeswoman.
On
Wednesday, several large pools of standing water were in the lake bed
— which actually is part of the Salt River — mostly at the west end,
but most of the bed was dry.
"We
usually come here once a month, just to walk and get some exercise. I
thought it would look a lot bigger from down here,'' Garcia said, referring to
the depth of the lake bed.
They came
to the lake to see it empty and after hearing it had been emptied
and the pair decided to look for change after noticing a quarter on
the bottom.
"It's
pretty interesting. We're finding all these things here — shoes,
glasses — just random stuff. But there's a lot of trash, too," he
said.
Baxter
said city officials, with the help of a private
contractor, have pulled trash from the bottom, mostly fast-food
cups, and also removed fish. She said officials have tried to
discourage people from walking on the dry lake bed.
“We’ve had a lot of
people going down there and we’ve been asking people to leave,'' she said,
noting the lake bed muck poses a hazard. "It’s just so important to
have them out of there for their own safety. There are parts that
look dry on top, but it’s not really that dry. The water has been there a long
time, so it’s not safe."
The lake
bed is a no-trespassing zone, Baxter said, but city workers generally
ask people to leave rather than issue a citation.
Curiosity
seekers and dam workers aren't the only ones who've spent time at the emptied
lake.
Workers
for TNT Cement Contractors of Chandler have chipped away at
decorative tiles, filled cracks and treated the concrete wall that
surrounds the lake with waterproofing.
"We're
just cleaning it up now. We've had to go all the way around it
— seven miles of wall,'' said Tom Freeland, 89, who started the company in
1957 and was among several people working the wall Wednesday in 97-degree heat.
His company has a six-year maintenance contract with the city.
Getting
water back to the lake
Water that will fill Town
Lake will come from SRP, starting with water released from Granite Reef Dam
upstream on the Salt River, where it will enter the utility's canal system.
From there, it will travel through several connections in the canal system to a
Tempe storm drain that will empty into the north side of the lake near the
Mill Avenue bridge.
While returning the water is
fairly simple, the legalities involved with securing the 880 million gallons
needed to fill the lake are more complex, SRP and city officials have said.
That's because SRP-delivered water can only be used on lands entitled
to its rights, including Valley municipalities.
However, Town Lake, which is formed on the Salt River bed, is not
part of Tempe's water rights.
To overcome
that, Tempe will receive credits for the water it emptied from
the lake and into SRP's Grand Canal in February. The
credits entitle the city to receive some of the water needed
to refill the lake.
The city
also will receive water from the New Conservation Storage
program at Roosevelt Lake. The program resulted
from a project that strengthened Roosevelt Dam. As part of that
work, which took place from 1989-96, several Valley cities, including
Tempe, agreed to contribute money to also raise the dam,
increasing Roosevelt Lake's storage capacity. Participating cities
can tap nearly 300,000 acre-feet of that additional water for purposes
such as Town Lake.
Soon after the lake
is refilled, the city will restock it with more than 1 million fish,
including minnow and goldfish, as well as other varieties, Baxters
said. The fish are available to anglers but also keep the
mosquito population in check, Baxter said.
Work on
the new steel and concrete dam at the west end of the lake started
in June 2014. The dam will replace an inflatable
rubber-dam system installed in 1999. The rubber dam on the west end failed
in 2010, causing an estimated 1 billion gallons of water to
rush downstream.
Workers
removed the rubber replacement dam after the lake was emptied, Baxter
said. Final detail work and testing of the new dam should be finished this
week.
The new
dam costs about $46 million. Of that, $33 million is voter-approved
bonds in Tempe, while the rest is from the city's general fund, Tempe officials
said. The new dam will span about 950 feet and is projected to
last at least 50 years. It operates with hydraulic gates that can
regulate water flow and is about 100 feet west of where the rubber
dam stood.
PCL
Construction, headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, is the general contractor.
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