I've heard rumors that they will no longer be dredging out the Government Bay ramp, rendering it useless. Does anyone have any information on this? Sounds like it has been an uphill battle and not worth the cost. I wonder if it would be cost effective to put some sort of breakwater structure at the mouth of the bay to help prevent silting in.
I too heard the ramp was going to be abandoned, but I don't remember where I heard that. As far as a breakwater, the silt isn't coming from the lake. It's erosion from the spit that juts out to the north. The long-term solution would be to riprap that shoreline down to an elevation of 1820(???), to slow the erosion of that point. A typical breakwater is used to protect infrastructure and boats in a harbor from wave action. In this case, that high ground would continue to erode (albeit slower), with a breakwater style fix.
Using Google Earth we can see the riprap efforts put in place to protect the parking lot and immediate ramp area are insufficient and a lot more of that shoreline would need to be protected.
I am guessing that in today's political environment, the cost to riprap this sufficiently to prevent loss of shoreline and silting in of the ramp is prohibitive.
The solution would be to rattle political cages on the potential loss of the ramp. They control the Corps' budget and can add money to fix the problem via an earmark in the budget, even if it doesn't pass the Corps' own cost-benefit analysis. Of course, some would call that Pork Barrel spending.
