University of Connecticut (UConn) is reviewing ways to improve Mirror Lake by addressing flood prevention issues, dredging, storm water management, and the water quality and aesthetics of the lake.
According to UConn, the work comes after a new drainage master plan and feasibility study determined the need to create more capacity in the lake to handle storm water runoff. The lake also has a 75-year-old dam that would need to be replaced and its spillway repaired.
A vote by The Board of Trustees now allows the project to begin its design process.
Storm water from its south Campus watershed and non-UConn property flows toward the lower-lying lake, reported UConn. This is detrimental to the water quality and creates less water storage capacity due to several feet of organic muck and sediment.
The existing dam was replaced in 1946 and the lake was last dredged in 1970. Seven years ago assessments determined Mirror Lake’s deepest areas were only about 3.5 feet, suggesting a loss of more than 6 feet of depth due to runoff.
“Mirror Lake is an important historic, functional and cultural landmark beloved by our students, the entire campus community, and the town of Mansfield for nearly 100 years. It really needs and deserves our intervention now more than ever,” said Sean Vasington ’99 (CAHNR), University Landscape Architect and Director of Site Planning and Landscape Architecture for UConn’s University Planning, Design & Construction (UPDC).
Although the soil dam from 1922 was replaced and the lake was dredged in 1946, water quality issues created by storm water runoff continue to be exacerbated by waterfowl excrement. The lake was dredged again in 1970 so workers could remove silt and shore up the center island, according to a Hartford Courant article at the time, reported UConn.
The addition of two fountains since 2015 have helped mitigate algae blooms to an extent.
Mirror Lake’s dam was deemed a higher safety hazard in 2019 than before, moving it into a hazard class defined by Department of Energy and Environmental Protection DEEP that maintains failure to control the conditions and better the site would result in life/safety issues and impacts to Route 195, secondary roads, and other downstream impacts.
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