Lake Redwood dredging starts

The Lake Redwood dredging operations are about to begin.

The main contracting firm, J.F. Brennan Company, Inc. of La Crosse, Wis., lowered the hydraulic dredge Michael B onto the lake at on Wednesday, April 13, 2022.

Area planners have spent over 25 years struggling to coordinate many different levels of government to work together on the effort to dredge Lake Redwood back to its original depth of up to 20 feet.

When dredging begins in the next couple of days, it will operate seven days per week, 24 hours a day to remove the permitted 650,000 cubic yards of accumulated sediment in the lake.

The Redwood-Cottonwood Rivers Control Area (RCRCA) received special permission from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to begin dredging as soon as the next couple of days, a month earlier than the DNR usually allows.