Once again, Lakeview Lake is all dried up, but as the culvert replacement project nears its end, the City of Mexico has decided to take advantage of the situation and make it deeper. 

Council approved the additional dredging of the lake during its July 13 meeting. Public Works Director Drew Williford said the project will be a joint effort between Sam Gaines Construction, the Public Works department and Parks and Recreation. 

Excavation began July 27 on the west end of the lake and it is expected to be complete by the end of August. The goal, Williford said, is to increase the depth to 5 feet as far as the project’s $100,000 cap will take it. 

Digging deeper near the culvert offers a number of benefits to the city. 

The Missouri Department of Conservation recommended the additional depth as a way to solve an ongoing algae problem on that side of the lake. Williford explained it will also greatly help reduce sediment accumulation near the culvert. 

“Part of the reason we chose five feet was to make the lake a lot cleaner, mitigate that risk of an algae effect on that lake and, hopefully, to make it a little nicer as far as fishing goes,” Williford said.

The city plans to use the excavated material to replenish its stockpile, which Williford said is getting pretty low after recent construction projects, and repurpose anything leftover for the impending demolition of the Audrain Medical Center. 

“I think we may have enough that we could proceed with deploying it over to the hospital and placing it on site in the upper parking lot on the north end and that could be used as fill and save the county and the city quite a bit of money,” he said.

While the additional work does qualify under the terms of the 21% match grant from the Department of Natural Resources’ American Rescue Plan Act stormwater grant, a number of change orders across all of Mexico’s stormwater improvement projects caused the city to reach its ARPA grant maximum. As a result, Williford said $550,000 will be transferred out of the capital improvement sales tax fund to cover all of the change orders, and the city has sufficient funding to support this. 

“Keep in mind, out of that $550,000, almost $181,000 of that was used for paving West Liberty Street and West Jackson Street,” Williford said. 

This work originally began as a culvert replacement last summer. The city first began draining Lakeview Lake in June 2025, but the project ran into several significant delays. 

Williford said Mexico received more than seven inches of rain between June and July, and the pump used to drain the lake needed to be sent for repairs. In the meantime, the city also discovered some inaccuracies in the survey work and determined that the box culvert would conflict with existing utilities.

Redesigning a new concrete box culvert cost another $25,000 and further delayed the project.

“At that point, we were having some scheduling conflicts with the precast plant getting the box culvert in time for processing and we were very close to the wet season,” Williford said.

In March, the city made the decision to wait until July to revisit the project. 

“Looking back, with all the rain that we had in April, May and even June, I’m very glad that we ended up holding off,” Williford said. 

Like the excavated dirt, Williford said the water pumped from the lake isn’t going to waste — it simply gets sent downstream as would any normal overflow.

“There’s actually no negatives as far as where the water’s going because it’s going in its normal direction,” he said. 

The lake is also filled naturally, so when the time comes, the city will simply turn off the pump and let mother nature do the rest. Once the lake is filled, Chad Unterriener, Parks and Recreation director, said he will get in touch with the conservation department and coordinate the restocking of fish. 

Williford estimated the project, as well as the bulk of the city’s eight other stormwater improvement projects, will be wrapping up at the end of this month freeing up city employees to focus more on planning out maintenance rather than responding to emergencies. 

“I think the residents here in Mexico will see quite a bit of difference here by the end of August,” he said. “We’d be able to focus on getting back to some critical maintenance needs at that point in time.”