Group hopes to keep lake plans afloat

Planners hoping to create a big new lake in Central Iowa have a couple of encouraging signals. Members of MEDIC, Marshalltown Economic Development Impact Committee, met with the Department of Natural Resources at the DNR’s board meeting Thursday morning, and the committee’s Mike Donahey says the DNR likes the latest plan they presented. Donahey says his committee’s worked the last year and-a-half to get Clear Creek Lake “back on the radar screen” and create a destination lake for central Iowa. Donahey says an obstacle to the plan may be cleared away with new willingness by Iowa State University to sell its Rhodes Research Farm, which contains most of the land that would be flooded by the project. With DNR approval, the next step is money. He says their job’s to find the funding now. He says the proposed lake would draw visitors from Marshalltown, Ames, Des Moines and all of central Iowa. He says there’s a “tremendous amount of work” ahead and it’s time to try and form a public-private partnership to find 20-million dollars from either private developers or the state of Iowa to make it work. The site of the lake on Highway 330 would be southwest of Marshalltown, near the Story – Marshall county line.