This week we will be dredging the silt island which has formed in the Wildwood lagoon. The island has been adopted by the park’s duck population, but we hope they will give it up without a struggle.
Today we will bring in a rented “long-reach excavator,” and we expect to begin dredging tomorrow. The work will constitute an obvious safety hazard, so we ask that you stay out of the park until we re-open it. Note that the area beyond the gates will remain open, so if you’d like to observe the work from Downrush Vista, go for it!
Periodic dredging of the lagoon has been required ever since we acquired Wildwood Park, but this particular island sprang up quite quickly. The water currents behind the dam are very complicated, and hydraulic experts are very expensive, so the precise cause of “Duck Island” may remain one of life’s mysteries (though we do have a less-than-educated guess).
Unfortunately, we will have to store the excavated material in the park for a while. Without having sealed trucks, it would make a huge mess for us to transport wet silt—and it would be illegal also. Once it dries, we will definitely remove it. Until then, the ducks can just move their colony inland!
*Some of our readers are pretty literal, so “a few days” should be translated as “probably less than a week, but we can’t be certain.”