Instead of

seeing the bottom of Lake Peachtree, passersby in coming weeks will see

two large "boats" floating on the water as a project to dredge

the silt from the bottom of the lake begins.

The boats,

actually called "dredges," will have pipes attached to them

so they can pump the silt to a staging area on nearby Drake Field so it

can dry out and be trucked off, said Ron Meyer of Dredge America, one

of the subcontractors on the project. The silt will be pumped out at a

rate of 4,000 gallons per minute, Meyer added.

Project officials

estimate that the operation will eventually take up all of Drake Field

so it can be used as a holding pond for all the water and silt that will

be pumped from the lake. All the water will eventually be returned to

the lake, Meyer said.

An estimated

20,000 cubic yards of silt will be removed from the lake bottom. Although

the lake is owned by Peachtree City, the county has an agreement to use

the lake as a drinking water reservoir; part of that agreement calls for

the county to pay for the periodic dredging of the lake.

The dredge

operators will have a set of plans indicating how deep and wide they need

to dredge in certain areas of the lake. The entire project is expected

to take 35 days, but Meyer said the company would "try and beat that."

Meyer said

the lake's fish should also be safe during the dredging operation, since

he has never seen the machines "suck up" fish.

The Fayette

County Commission decided to spend an extra $174,000 to avoid using a

dredging process that would involve drastically lowering the level of

the lake. In addition to keeping the water system from taking the reservoir

out of commission, keeping the lake levels up also helps the lake's environment.

The water system

had plenty of money in a separate account to perform the operation, officials

noted. The account consisted of funds collected in water bills.

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