The Starke County Forest continues drawing complaints about drainage issues.
Forester Bruce Wakeland told the Starke County Park Board Tuesday that a complaint was brought to the County Drainage Board this week by a neighboring landowner. “For some reason, he’s focused on the Starke County Forest as his problem,” Wakeland said. “He does have drainage problems up where he lives apparently, but his house is built on a swamp and it doesn’t even have connectivity to the drains.”
Beaver dams have been blamed for flooding in the area, a claim Wakeland has disputed. The county has installed a beaver control device to help solve the issue, but Wakeland told board members the work wasn’t done properly.
He said the way the device was installed, it’s far too noisy, causing the beavers to instinctively build dams. “I’ve never given it more than about a 50-50 chance of working, but I haven’t given up on it yet,” he said. “So we got a major problem to try to fix, and my intention is, in the next week or two, to go in and talk with the county surveyor and to find out who’s responsible for this mistake. And if the contractor’s not, well then what’s it going to cost to fix it because I still think we’ve got over $3,000 invested in it. It’s worth an attempt to try and fix what is an obvious problem.”
On top of that, he says someone’s been trespassing in the forest property, in an apparent attempt to fix the drainage issue. “Somebody came out there and dug a hole clear through the lane, and also, they went down to the next dam and dug a big notch in the next dam, directly west of the observation tower,” Wakeland said. “And so not only did he drain the marsh between the observation tower and the main pond, but somebody dug a ditch clear through the lane.”
Wakeland says that puts the access lane at risk of washing out and also makes the beaver control device even less likely to work. He believes the best solution to drainage issues would be to build a bypass ditch, but he guesses that would cost $30,000 – money the county doesn’t have.
Still, Wakeland feels that in spite of the complaints, he’s done a good job at maintaining the water levels according to an agreement made when Dennis Estok was county surveyor. He also believes the drainage complaints are just taking money away from maintenance and improvements at the forest.
Surveyor Bill Crase is expected to put together a report on the drainage issue, along with some suggested solutions.
