Use Extreme Caution On Cheyenne Lakes

On Tuesday, crews from the Board Of Public Utilities started to fill Sloans Lake in Lions Park. While Filling Sloans Lake, flowing water and fluctuating water levels may impact the ice in North Crow and Upper North Crow Diversion Dams, Sloans Lake, Kiwanis Lake and Lake Absarracca (pictured above).

Moving water from one lake to another may destabilize the ice. For safety reasons, BOPU advises anyone using the lakes to exercise extreme caution. Don’t judge the strength of ice by its appearance, age, thickness, outside temperatures, or whether or not the ice is covered with snow.

The strength of ice is based on all the above factors plus the depth of water under the ice, size of the water body, water chemistry, water flows, the distribution of the load on the ice and local climate conditions.

Ice seldom freezes uniformly; therefore, ice may be a foot thick in one location and only a few inches thick a few feet away. To fill Sloans Lake, the BOPU uses Cheyenne’s raw water system to move water from Upper North Crow Creek at the North Crow Diversion Dam to Lake Absarracca, then to Kiwanis Lake and ultimately to Sloans Lake.

Crews estimate that it will take approximately a week to fill the lake.