1. The Wonder Lake Sportsman’s Club (WLSC) continued their brush clearing project of Fireworks Island on February 17th.

2. On Saturday, March 17th, the Nippersink Watershed Association will conduct another workday, clearing invasive brush from a portion of the Merchant Creek stream corridor. This volunteer work is being done in advance of an upcoming IEPA Section 319 funded stream stabilization project to help minimize the significant amounts of sediment that this parcel has delivered to Wonder Lake over the past decades. Meet at 8 am on the north side of Wooded Shores Drive at Pleasant Drive. As always, volunteers are welcome.

3. The MPOA dredging contractor has signed the change order agreeing to conduct the “extra” dredging that will now be done in 2018. This is the result of a significant private donation that will fully fund the removal of an additional 60,000 cubic yards of sediment from Wonder Lake. This is in addition to the 469,238 cubic yards of sediment already under contract to be dredged under the SSA# 9 funding.

4. The MPOA received information from a Wonder Lake resident indicating that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation was seeking fill material, and inquiring whether the Wonder Lake sediment that has already been dredged could possibly be sold to WISDOT. The following response was sent back to that party.

Thanks for your information. As you may be aware, it is the hope and intent of the MPOA to be able to market the sediment currently being dredged from Wonder Lake as a means of providing funding for future lake maintenance / dredging needs.
Our consultant has advised us that the highest potential revenue to be gained from sediment sales would be to market it as topsoil, and ideally,in the 40 pound bags you can find at Menards, Lowes, etc. as that would produce the highest revenue yield.
As such, the MPOA has already initiated discussions with topsoil vendors, but nothing will happen until the dredging is completed this year.
Given the distance involved between the Wonder Lake sediment drying facility and current on-going WISDOT projects, it seems perhaps unlikely that WISDOT would be able to offer a proce that would be cost effective to them and attractive to the MPOA, but if someone from WISDOT still wished to reach out to us, they could get in touch with me.
Thanks again for your interest and input.

This is probably a good time to remind everyone that all of the sediment being dredged from Wonder Lake belongs to the MPOA, and we hope to market it once dredging is complete.

5. The Illinois Lakes Management Association is hosting its 33rd annual conference at the Parke Hotel and Conference Center in Bloomington, Illinois from March 22nd to March 23th (with workshops held on the 24th). Registration information is available at https://ilma-lakes.org/conference-registration