Tri-State Diving's crew finished a big commercial job on Lake Minnewaska in Pope County on July 21 2004. We spent 3 days there. We were contracted by Pope County to remove about 100 tons of top soil from the bottom of Lake Minnewaska. Weather was good and the only major problem we had was swimmers itch. All four of us got it and a couple of us were still suffering from it a week later. The first picture below shows the pump and 4 wheeler on the edge of Lake Minnewaska. The pump was capable of pumping about 700 gallons per minute and we figured we were averaging about 10% solids. We spent 30 hours on the job site working in a maximum depth of about 3 feet. Depth of the top soil varied from 2 inches to about 11 inches in some areas. We used a vacuum device that we built that was attached to the input line to the pump. The discharge line went through a 200 foot culvert and traveled about another 200 feet to the retention site that the county had built to help the material to settle out before reaching a silt trap. A discharge pipe from the silt trap then goes to a creek where the run off water flowed back to the lake.
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