A public information meeting has been scheduled for this project, 6 p.m., Aug. 23, 2021, via Zoom. Registration prior is required.
Aug. 23, 2021 Public Information Meeting Registration: https://cityofmadison.com/.../projects/spring-harbor-dredge

Spring Harbor is a man-made harbor, located on the west side of the City of Madison along the shores of Lake Mendota. This harbor features an existing municipal public boat launch and fishing pier at City of Madison’s Spring Harbor Park. Over the years, increased sedimentation and public and private access points have minimized opportunities for recreational boating and fishing.

One of the impacts to the recreational use of this boat launch is that Spring Harbor also serves as a major outfall for a 19.5’ x 6’ storm sewer box culvert that drains 2,400 acre urban area of the Spring Harbor watershed. The outfall is located just east of the boat launch and directly discharges to Spring Harbor (see Figure 1).

Spring Harbor Dredge
The watershed served by this outfall was primarily developed prior to modern stormwater management practices such as retention and detention basins and as a result, the urban runoff discharging to the harbor carriers a reasonably large amount of sediment into the harbor at the boat launch. This is compounded by Madison’s primary use of sand versus salt for winter icing operations which contribute to the accumulated sediment deposited at this outfall into the harbor. As a result, this harbor has a higher rate of siltation than would be otherwise experienced requiring routine dredging to maintain navigability of the existing channel for recreational boating and improved fishing habitat. As the channel and harbor silt in, users of the public boat launch and harbor residents with boat docks have trouble launching boats and navigating through Spring Harbor to access Lake Mendota and the fishing conditions decrease with continued siltation.