Daily Newsletters
Account
Washington Evening Journal
111 North Marion Avenue
Washington, IA 52353
319-653-2191
Culvert installed at Fairfield’s Walton Lake
Warm start to January lets contractor make progress on drawn-down lake
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
FAIRFIELD – January is not normally a good month for construction, but mild temperatures early in the month allowed a contractor to make good progress on replacing the golf cart bridge at Walton Lake in Fairfield.
The Fairfield City Council hired Drish Construction to replace the golf cart bridge with an earthen dam and box culvert, hoping to finish the project by the fall. After awarding the contract to Drish in March for just under $200,000, a series of delays in obtaining the construction and lake drawdown permits pushed the project from the summer to the fall and ultimately into the winter. A snowstorm over Thanksgiving weekend quashed any hope of finishing it in 2025.
However, an unseasonably warm start to 2026 allowed Drish Construction to get into the mostly drawn-down lake on Jan. 5 to remove the old golf cart bridge and cart path. French-Reneker-Associates Project Engineer Marcus Clark, who is overseeing the project, wrote in a report to the city council that 90 percent of the earthfill planned for the dam had been placed by Jan. 14, and that the 8-foot by 10-foot box culvert (allowing aquatic life to pass through) was installed Jan. 15-16.
Clark said that progress on the dam over the next month would depend heavily on weather conditions, and that “we do not anticipate much construction.”
The city’s contract with Drish Construction gives the company 30 working days to complete the project, but doesn’t count the days from Nov. 15, 2025 to April 1, 2026 because of cold temperatures and suboptimal working conditions. Clark said all the work the company has done in January has been on “free days” that don’t count against its 30-day limit.
To accommodate demolition of the old bridge and creation of an earthen dam, the city began draining the lake in September, planning to draw it down 11.5 feet below its typical level. This project was set in motion after engineering firm Calhoun-Burns & Associates inspected the bridge in March 2024 and gave it a rating of zero on a 0-9 scale, classifying it as “failed” and “beyond repair,” forcing it to close.
Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com
