MEADVILLE — More deficiencies in Tamarack Lake’s northern dam are forcing the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission to draw down the lake’s water level another 5 feet — and to remove as many living fish as it can, as soon as possible. It’s expected that thousands of fish will die there in coming weeks.

The commission’s deputy director forecasts a four- to five-year timeline to complete necessary upgrades to both the lake’s southern and northern dams — a project that could be in the millions or tens of millions of dollars.

“We started lowering it last night (Tuesday),” Eric Levis, spokesman for the Fish and Boat Commission in Harrisburg, said Wednesday afternoon in a telephone interview. “We’ll lower it an additional 5 feet, bringing it down a total of 10 feet.”

When completed by next week, the most recent drawdown will put Tamarack Lake’s remaining water level at between 3 and 5 feet in the basin’s pooled areas, according to Levis. As a result, parts of the lake’s 562-acre basin will be dry or muddy.

“We’ve closed the facility to the public,” Levis continued. “We’ll have signs posted, put security fencing around the dams to have people stay off and have people stay out of the dried-out lake.”

The additional deficiencies in the northern earthen dam were discovered Tuesday during an engineering inspection, Levis said.

“There was a 2-foot vertical void next to the conduit pipe of the dam,” Levis said. “There also was more seepage on the dam.”

Normally between 13 and 15 feet deep, Tamarack first was drawn down approximately 5 feet in November 2011 after Fish and Boat Commission officials observed water seeping through the dam and from underneath its outlet at that time.

“There’s no danger of (the dam’s) collapse, but the engineers saw issues,” Levis said Wednesday of the renewed drawdown effort. “Public safety is our priority.”

Dropping the water level will be done at a rate of approximately 6 to 12 inches per day until the lake is down the additional 5 feet. It’s being done slowly to allow the newly exposed portions of the dam to dry out slowly, Levis said. Lowering the lake level is expected to be completed by mid- to late next week, according to Levis.

The drawdown means a loss of aquatic life in the thousands, too, because of low water levels, low oxygen levels and high temperatures in the remaining water, according to Levis.

“We expect a large fish kill,” Levis said. “We’ll do what we can to remove fish and we want to make that clear to the public, but a lot of fish could be killed.”

Fish and Boat Commission officials had set four trap nets in the lake Wednesday to capture fish for study. Today, officials will study whether the samples captured show the fish are under too much stress to transport.

“Normally we do not do this (transport fish out of a lake) this time of year, as the water is above 80 degrees,” said Allen Woomer, a fisheries biologist with the Fish and Boat Commission’s Tionesta office who was at Tamarack on Wednesday. “It stresses them out.”

The drawdown also is stressing out area residents like Melissa Fuller, an organizer with Friends of Tamarack Lake.

“I’m very upset and saddened, but very hopeful that it will be fixed,” Fuller said Tuesday. “We will keep working to make sure the dam is fixed.”

Friends of Tamarack Lake, a group of lakeshore residents and others who use the lake for recreation, banded together for action this spring. The group has been very active lobbying local and state officials to repair the dam and refill the lake, which has several public access points and is a popular fishing and boating site.

However, Brian Barner, deputy director of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission cautions that doing the necessary repairs likely take at least four to five years.



State seeks funds

Last month, Barner sent a letter to Crawford County Commissioner C. Sherman Allen indicating the commission will seek money from the Commonwealth Financing Authority through the H20 PA Act, which provides grants for flood control projects, to “rebuild and upgrade” the lake’s two dams. The letter also indicated that the state Department of Environmental Protection has classified Tamarack as a flood control facility and that both of its dams must be upgraded to meet current standards.

“How severe an issue it is we don’t have an idea at this point,” Barner said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Harrisburg. “It will take four to five years (to complete) once we have an idea on funding we need.”

The commission has started work on the project and hopes to put together an H20 PA Act funding application with a cost estimate before the end of the year, Barner said.

“It will be seven figures or eight figures,” Barner said of the cost, referring to it running into the millions of dollars.

Engineering design work for the repairs and getting the necessary permits from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection are expected to cost a total of $1 million to $2 million, Barner said.

Engineering and permit fees usually are about 15 percent of a project’s total cost, Barner said. That would put Tamarack’s estimated total cost at between $6.6 million to $13.2 million.

 It will take about one year for design, followed by another year for the permitting process, he said. It would then take probably about two years or more for construction to be completed.

“The good news is we’re not enlarging the footprint of the lake,” he said. “We shouldn’t have any archaeological issues or threatened species because the lake is already there. I’m fairly optimistic it will work out.”



Tamarack Lake was built in the early 1960s by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a flood control project. The lake also is used for fire protection and recreation while the lake and its environs are used for wildlife habitat.

Located southeast of Meadville, its reservoir covers 562 acres in West Mead, East Mead and East Fairfield townships.