BRICE PRAIRIE, Wis. – The 8,000-acre Lake Onalaska, created when Lock and Dam 7 backed up the Mississippi ad Black rivers in 1940. is filling up with sediment – and something needs to be done before it becomes a giant sandbox, said restaurateur Michael Todd, whose fashionable Red Pines Grill and Bar is on the backwaters. The channel in front of Red Pines once was 10 feet deep. Now, Todd said, it’s 18 inches, mostly from sediment flowing out of the bluffs down Halfway Creek in Holmen. Todd made his points at an organizational meeting to find funds to dredge a 1,000-foot channel — 60 to 100 feet wide and eight feet deep. A 12-foot would reroute Halfway Creek sediment. The project would cost $230,000, Todd said. The state wildlife agency already has put up $10,000 to study sediment damage to fish habitat. Issues include water quality, high turbidity and low oxygen, Todd said. At Red Pines the channel is filling with algae and swamp weeds. What to do with sediment that’s dredged up? Todd proposed piling it up to create a small island.
Dining room view. Mostly algae and Swamp weeds. And access by water from Lake Onalaska now a thing of the past.
No longer. The channel at Todd’s restaurant has filled to preclude recreational boating and fishing. To get from a boat landing on Highway Z on Brice Prairie, boaters now must circle east around Rosebud Island to the main lake.