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Canonsburg Lake Restoration

The Canonsburg Lake Restoration & Improvement Committee has been working with the Army Corps of Engineers on plans to clean up, restore and preserve Canonsburg Lake. Now the planning stage is complete, as described in the following words of the Corps of Engineers. “The Pittsburgh District Corps of Engineers (District) is proposing to restore a portion of the degraded aquatic ecosystem of Canonsburg Lake located along Little Chartiers Creek in Washington County, PA near State Route 19. The lake is formed by Alcoa Dam, originally built in 1943 to create a source of industrial water supply. In 1958 the lake and dam were donated to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; they are managed by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. Since its completion, the lake has been filling with sediment at the rate of approximately 0.1 feet per year. Because of sedimentation, the original 76-acre lake has been reduced to about 63 acres, and its maximum depth has been reduced from 42.6 feet to about 11.5 feet. In addition the lake has been degraded by excessive sediment inflow and phosphorous-loading from agricultural fertilizers used in the watershed. As a result, the lake is now inhabited by increasing numbers of less desirable fish species, such as gizzard shad and carp that thrive in warm, shallow, eutrophic waters. The Corps proposes to use a combination of lake dredging and in-lake sediment disposal within geotubes (very large, porous fabric "bags") placed along the shoreline in strategic locations to create 13.48 acres of shallow water submerged aquatic habitat, 2.02 acres of emergent wetland habitat, 0.97 acres of riparian zone habitat, and 10.27 acres of deepwater habitat. The recommended plan will restore a total of 26.74 acres of the lake at a cost of approximately $6 million.” Note: in addition, the project requires local funds totaling about $2.1 million, which the Save Canonsburg Lake Committee is now trying to raise. To meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act for this project, the District prepared a Feasibility Study containing an Environmental Assessment (EA) and a draft Finding of No Significant Impact FONSI) that describes the restoration project and its associated impacts. A copy of the entire study is included on this website for your review. Click on Planning Documents to view the study. To view / print the entire Project Summary Report as a PDF document, click here

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