In December of 2020, representatives of the Kankakee River Basin and Yellow River Basin Development Commission pitched their vision to reconstruct a section of the Yellow River to federal and state officials.
Exactly two years later, that vision is now a lasting asset for Northwest Indiana. For the second straight year, workers completed the nearly two-mile long project for less than was budgeted. The current project began upstream of the Marshall County line in September of 2021. Work resumed this past spring immediately downstream in Starke County, where severe bank erosion was threatening vulnerable residents along the river.
Project tasks included reducing bank grades, placing stone structures in the river to direct water away from vulnerable banks, increasing channel capacity, reinforcing banks with stone and onsite wood and reseeding banks with native erosion-control vegetation.
The purposeful reduction of Yellow River sediment is a key facet of the Commission’s forty-year work plan, which was adopted under state law. Another stretch of Yellow River reconstruction is currently being permitted, with work slated to take place in 2023.
Cardno, now Stantec, in Walkerton designed the Starke County project and The Stanger Group from Goshen completed its construction. For further information regarding this project, please contact Executive Director Scott Pelath at 219-861-7999.
