Beebe Lake will be a lake largely without water this month when Cornell University Grounds Department, at the request of Cornell Plantations, undertakes a partial dredging of the lake to remove sediment from the east end. To do this, the lake's water level will be lowered through a drain in the chilled water plant on the south side of the lake.

At the same time, Cornell engineers will install cooling pipes to serve the new North Campus residence halls. By combining the two efforts, the lake will have to be emptied only once and for a shorter period of time. This minimizes environmental impacts and more quickly brings the lake back to its normal appearance.

Between Aug. 10 and Aug. 31, normally the driest season of the year, 1,500 yards of gravelly material will be removed from the eastern end of the lake. The lake should resume its normal level and appearance by late September.

"Beebe Lake has been a favorite icon for generations of Cornellians, but because the site was originally a swamp, it needs this kind of periodic dredging to ensure that it will continue to have the look of a lake that our community expects," says Don Rakow, the Elizabeth Newman Wilds Director of Cornell Plantations.

The dredged material will drain on specially constructed "silt reservoirs" for one to two weeks and then be trucked to the Stevenson Road experimental composting facility. This sediment material will serve as a base onto which organic waste from Cornell dining halls, the Statler Hotel, horse barns and other facilities will be composted. The material will be sufficiently dry that it will not drip on any of the roads or properties as trucks transport the material.

To prevent the water that flows downstream from getting too turbid (cloudy) as a result of the dredging, the engineers will erect a temporary "silt curtain" from the western edge of Werly Island to the north shore of Beebe Lake. The curtain will entrap small particles of silt yet allow water to flow at its normal rate downstream. Although Beebe Lake's water level will drop considerably and most of its fish probably will go downstream, some are likely to stay in the remaining shallow ponds, providing a rich bounty for the great blue herons that frequent the shores of the lake.

The North Campus residence halls will be cooled by an extension of the existing campus central cooling system. In July, the central campus began switching over to the Lake Source Cooling Project, in which cold water is pumped from Cayuga Lake to a heat-exchange facility where closed-loop circulating water is cooled.