Three hundred tons of accumulated sediment from storm water runoff will be dredged from the upper Gleason Lake wetland pond beginning the week of January 22 and continuing into early February. Roads and neighborhood access will not be affected.

Located south of County Road Six in Plymouth, the wetland pond is one of three ponds installed in 1995 by the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District (MCWD), designed to clean water running through Gleason Lake and Gleason Creek into Lake Minnetonka by trapping pollution-laden sediment. Half of the polluting phosphorous entering Gleason Lake and Lake Minnetonka comes from sediment.

"The ponds have exceeded our expectation in their cleaning capacity," said Eric Evenson, district administrator for the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District. "We're cleaning out the upper Gleason Lake pond earlier than we expected. It's best to dredge in the winter when the ground is frozen because there is less impact to the environment." Evenson noted that a public meeting was held earlier this month in Plymouth, and informational flyers to the neighborhood have been distributed to update and educate area residents about the six-year-old water pollution reduction project.

The Gleason Creek sub-watershed drains 3900 acres of highly developed land into Wayzata Bay of Lake Minnetonka. Six years ago, the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District, the City of Wayzata and the Gleason Lake Improvement Association partnered together to come up with a solution to deal with water quality issues and flooding problems

A series of three restored wetland ponds-- one upstream of Gleason Lake that was originally County Ditch #15 and two located in Wayzata between Gleason Lake and Lake Minnetonka --were designed and built to treat polluted storm water runoff. Periodic flooding in residential and commercial areas of Wayzata has been greatly reduced by the Gleason Lake Dam, also installed in 1995.

For more information about the ponds and dredging schedule, check back to this page for updates.