Stable shoreline a priority for Mozingo
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
City of Maryville equipment operator Russell Joslin braves a Friday morning snow flurry to load chunks of concrete into a dump truck. The rubble, which used to form part of the now-replaced Northwest Missouri Regional Airport runway, is being repurposed as riprap in an effort to slow erosion along the Mozingo Lake shoreline.
When it comes to Mozingo Lake, the City of Maryville is rocking out.
No, City Hall has not booked Bruce Springsteen for a concert at The Point. This is rock of a different sort, albeit one that is essential to the lake’s future as a recreational fishery, and, more important, it’s core function as Maryville’s primary source of drinking water.
When it approved the fiscal 2017 budget in September, the City Council made a priority of lining critical portions of the Mozingo Lake shoreline with riprap — large rocks and chunks of concrete intended to block erosion and prevent the inflow of silt.
This year’s budget allocates $75,000 for riprap work at the 1,000-acre reservoir, more than twice the amount appropriated in each of the past two spending cycles.
In addition, the city is also taking advantage of a windfall, a large pile of concrete fragments left over from last year’s reconstruction of the Northwest Missouri Regional Airport runway.
Most of the fractured pavement from the old runway was ground up and used as substrate for the new airstrip, but what remains is being hauled by a city crew for placement along the lake’s western shore.
While not as high-profile or glamorous as construction of a new golf course or conference center — both recent developments at city-owned Mozingo Lake Recreation Park — Assistant City Manager Ryan Heiland said last week that rocking the lakeshore is an important task.
Removing silt caused by erosion, Heiland said, adds to the expense of treating water piped into Maryville homes and businesses and also compromises the aquatic habitat for what is perhaps northwest Missouri’s hottest fishing destination.
Also, now that the conference center is under construction, along with a privately developed hotel, the council has directed staff to start emphasizing preservation and maintenance at the park rather than new development.
While several construction projects remain on the Mozingo wish list, including a welcome center, new RV spaces, and additional rental cabins, preservation and maintenance emerged this fall as a central goal both for the council and the Mozingo Lake Advisory Board.
Up to this point, riprap work at the lake has been limited to the eastern shore extending from The Point near the southern bank to just south of the Mozingo Outdoor Education Recreation Area, a distance of a little more than two miles.
Over the next year, plans call for the installation of rock along the western shore across the “intake” cove where water is channeled into large pipes feeding the city’s supply lines. Riprap will also be laid at the emergency spillway at the lake’s southwest corner.
Heiland said protecting the intake cove is especially important in terms of guarding water quality, and that significant erosion has become an issue at the spillway.
When completed later this year, the riprap work will add about a mile to the length of protected shoreline, which leaves — well — plenty of work for later.
Altogether, Mozingo has 26 miles of shoreline, so after the 2017 effort there will still be 23 miles in need of protection, a vast distance that Heiland said will have to be rocked up eventually.
He said that riprap for the lake will likely become a regular line item in city budgets for years to come, and that rock will eventually have to be transported by barge in order to line the shore of the lake’s more remote areas.
In addition to the riprap work, other Mozingo spending in 2017 is to include rental cabin maintenance, golf course irrigation upgrades, driving range improvements, and water and sewer improvements related to hotel and conference center construction.
