Forest Hill Park lake maintenance scheduled for spring

Richmond’s Department of Public Utilities will soon be pulling loads of debris out of the lake at Forest Hill Park. Howard Glenn, DPU Operations Manager, visited the Forest Hill Neighborhood Association meeting this past week to announce that work is expected to begin by late March or mid-April. He described the work as a “maintenance cleaning” rather than a full dredging.

Park visitors should expect to see large trucks frequently accessing the lake during the project, but nearby walkways are not scheduled to close. The work is also not expected to impact the South of the James Farmers Market on Sundays, nor the Forest Hill 5K scheduled for Saturday, March 16.

The park’s lake had a major restoration in 2010, during which two large pits called forebays were dug into the south end in order to catch sediment and debris carried down Reedy Creek. While those forebays are designed to be cleared every three to five years, the lake has not been operated on since 2017. During that cleaning, about 1,600 cubic yards of debris were removed according to Glenn, who equated it to 100 dump truck loads. Glenn acknowledged that the maintenance interval was being stretched and stated that a survey would be made of how well the lake’s infrastructure is functioning.