Edgewood works to keep sediment from Tahoe

Edgewood Creek is getting an overhaul to improve water quality. Photos/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

Playing in the rough has taken on a whole new meaning at Edgewood Tahoe.

The Stateline golf course looks like a construction zone these days. And that’s because it is one.

By December 2016 the 154-room Edgewood Lodge should be open. There will also be 40 cabin units along the eighth and ninth fairways that will be fractional ownership. The lodge will include a 120-seat restaurant, adventure center, spa, fitness center and lakefront pool.

Right now much of the golf course appears to be more dirt than grass. Work on the lodge will resume in the spring. Work on water quality projects will continue through the winter.

“The best time to perform creek enhancements is during periods of low flow,” Lew Feldman, attorney representing Edgewood Tahoe, told Lake Tahoe News. “It includes increased storage capacity of ponds that act as a catchment basin and expansion of wetlands. It will occur over this winter period, which from an environmental perspective is the safest time to undertake these enhancements.”

That is the work that can be seen from Highway 50. Mounds of dirt have been piling up.

It is Edgewood Creek that is getting so much attention. It is at the bottom of the 4,000-acre Kingsbury Watershed.

Holes 7, 8, and 9 will be tweaked to accommodate Edgewood Lodge. The clubhouse is in the background.

That dirt being taken out of the ponds is called “dredge spoils”. The plan is to keep as much of it as possible on the property to be used for the hotel and golf course hole realignments.

When the project is done it’s estimated that more than 400,000 pounds of sediment will be captured each year, with another 50,000 pounds of fine sediment. This means all those particles will not be reaching Lake Tahoe.

Future dredging will be necessary because sediment will always flow downhill to Edgewood.

Feldman called this the largest private water quality improvement project in the basin’s history.

While he wouldn’t give the exact dollar amount, he said it is costing several million dollars. The project is expected to be finished by spring before the runoff starts.

On the other side of the golf course holes 7, 8 and 9 are being worked on. Nine should be done next year. It will have a lakefront finish. Seven and eight will be finished the following year.