Marshfield Man-Made Lake Proposal Put On Hold

The dream of creating a man-made lake in the city of Marshfield has been put on hold because of the projected expense of the project.

Wisconsin has about 15,000 lakes, but there are few communities in the state that don’t have a body of water either within their boundaries or nearby. Marshfield is one of them, and city leaders have often dreamed about creating a lake for local recreation and tourism.

“There’s always been rumblings over the years about ‘Why don’t we have a lake, could we build a lake?’” said Jason Angell, the Marshfield director of planning and economic development. “Everyone wants to swim, to fish, to have a nice home on the lake.”

The city asked University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point land use planning students to do some research, who found a nearby spot where a man-made lake could be built. But Angell says the price of the venture, about $30 million, wouldn’t float.

“I have no idea whether that even includes, say, the cost to extend city services, utilities,” said Angell. “Because we don’t want to just build a lake. We want to put up the parks, the swimming areas, as well as homes.”

Angell says without some outside help, the lake likely won’t get constructed.

“Perhaps someday, with some of the frac sand mines that we have around here, we may be able to establish a partnership with one of our companies and say, ‘Can your reclamation plan include – even a swimming beach would be nice to have?” said Angell.

The likelihood of pollution rich runoff from the Marshfield region’s agricultural fields is another reason why the man-made lake idea may not come to fruition.