Dredging held on broken valve

The McKinley Lake dredging project is slowly moving forward, as work is done to fix the valve in the lake, said Creston Parks and Recreation board member John Kawa during Tuesday’s meeting.

“The first step with anything is to fix the valve so they can take [water levels] down when they want to take it down,” Kawa said. “It’s down 15 feet in this pit and there’s supposed to be a shaft that comes up out of the pit so you can turn this thing above the ground.”

Aside from the valve, Kawa said the engineering planning is continuing, though no specific updates were mentioned.

The restoration of McKinley Lake was first approved in the November 2021 ballot. The project approved included lake sediment removal (dredging), shoreline improvements, improvement of fish habitat and angling access and other recreational amenities.

In addition to McKinley Lake, discussions were had regarding the improvements to Creston’s McKinley Park Aquatic Center (MPAC). Samantha Baird, co-founder and volunteer on the MPAC committee, brought forward an amendment to the original grant agreement with the Dekko Foundation.

“We had to come up with a revised budget since the project as originally planned wasn’t going forward and the park and rec was taking over the money for the pool,” Baird said. “They’ve requested that $100,000 of the $414,000 they already have given to the project be moved into the endowment [fund].”

Changes were made to the initial plan after bids came up $500,000 more expensive than planned. Decisions are still being made on how to improve the pool. The board hopes to make small improvements each year.

This year’s project was to put in a new pool heater, finished in early July. Getting the correct temperature has been a work in progress.

“The pool go really warm that first day,” board member Mark Huff said. “It shot up to 101 degrees. It’s about 86 degrees right now in the wading pool and 82 in the large pool.”

The pool is open 1 to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 1-6 p.m. on Sundays.