Among the 10 bids submitted for the wetland project, Whiskeyboard Construction's $583,997 bid was the lowest. Several bids came in as high as $1 million for the 35-acre wetland project.
“We’re at a point where we’ve invested a significant amount of money into this project, and we don’t want to get halfway down the road next year or next month, and find we’ve spent our capital improvement project funds and now we’re not going to move forward,” City Administrator Stephanie Ellwein said.
For the city to sell some of the land along the lake, it would require a public vote per state law. The city currently owns 75% of land along the lake.
“What they found is that if that wetland is in place and we take out half the sediment, then eventually with about 10 or so refills of the lake the remaining sediment would get sufficiently rinsed out if the water coming in is cleaner,” DWU biochemistry professor Paula Mazzer said of the findings from the student-led lake project.