The flood-storage benefits produced by the lakes of the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) will be protected when a dredging program to remove large amounts of sediment from the lake bottoms begins later this year at Tappan Lake in Harrison County.

“We’re at the starting point now of a dredging program in our lakes that will be active for many years to maintain the lakes for proper flood-storage capacity to protect people and property, ” said Boris Slogar, MWCD chief engineer. “ Dredging of the MWCD lakes is fundamental to the MWCD mission of flood reduction and follows the Amendment of the Official Plan of the MWCD that was adopted in 2005 and very clearly calls for dredging as a key component to the maintenance of the lakes. This multi-year, multi-million dollar effort will protect and extend the useful life of the reservoirs for many years to come. ”