SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — A $1 million clean-up project in McCook Lake in Union County brought it closer to recreational use in 2026.
“I thought it was successful,” McCook Lake Association president Dirk Lohry said of the South Dakota Game Fish and Parks clean-up project. “There was a lot of debris. Cars, a table saw, a riding lawn mower, parts of small garages.”
That kind of debris along with sediment washed into the 270 acre oxbow lake during the June 2024 flooding.
“Just over 20,000 cubic yards of sediment and debris (were removed), ” Kip Rounds of the GFP said during the Sept. 4 GFP commission meeting. The contractor finished the project by deadline, he said.
The lake association will pump water into the lake in 2026 to restore it to recreational level. The city of North Sioux City plans to open its public access in 2026, Rounds said.
The clean-up area was identified in a survey to determine the scope of the work, Rounds said.
“We wanted to get an idea of the extent of the damage,” Rounds said. The survey involved FEMA GFP and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he said.
The GFP led the project but “there were a lot of moving parts and many folks involved,” Rounds said last week. The GFP’s role was to obtain permits and communicate with the entities.
The project leaned heavily on the GFP engineering staff because it was challenging to determine the scope of the project, Rounds said.
Most of the work was focused on the north shore of the lake where two peninsulas of sediment had formed in the lake, he said. Sediment also formed some small islands in the lake.
The GFP hired Three Oaks Construction through a bid process, Rounds said. The lake association also hired Three Oaks to do additional work near the GFP work area, Lohry said.
The association paid about $25,000 for that work.
The $1 million was paid for from the South Dakota Department of Public Safety from the state emergency and disaster fund, Rounds said. No GFP money was used for the project, he said.
Lohry said in his KELOLAND interview, the association expected more than 20,000 cubic yards of sediment would need to be removed.
Lake bottom elevations were identified as well as known sediment deposits, Rounds said at last week’s meeting.
Where all the expected sediment went, “is still a mystery,” Lohry said. Sediment did hold a lot of water and it likely settled as a lower amount and some also likely went from the lake and into the river, Lohry said.
“Normally, the lake is at 10 feet and the excavation went down to 8 feet,” Lohry said. The normal recreational lake level is set because the lake association pumps water into it.
The pumping of water from the Missouri River will start this spring. The no-wake zone that has been in place since the 2024 flood will be removed in 2026.
The excavation work started on May 15 and was completed on Aug. 1, Rounds told the GFP commission.
The sediment and debris were removed from the lake from the shore by a long-arm excavator, Rounds said.
The excavator dumped the sediment into a dumpster trailer so it could be hauled to a drying site away from the lake.
“They’d take load after load,” Rounds said. The process was set on repeat until the project was completed.
The contractor used an an excavator, or backhoe, placed on a floating barge to remove debris and sediment from the lake, Rounds said.
“What was interesting is that it wasn’t dredging,” Lohry said. “They actually used an excavator.”
The floating excavator dumped debris and sediment into a barge. The barge was pushed to shore where another excavator removed the material and put it in a dumpster trailer.
