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At the beginning of this month, Marine Lake in Weston-super-Mare re-opened for residents and visitors to enjoy this summer and beyond.
We’ve invested £300,000 to bring the lake back into use as an outdoor swimming and watersports destination, part of our £700,000 Great Lakes project, which also involves work to revitalise Clevedon's Marine Lake and Portishead Lake Grounds.
Over the past two months, about 30,000 tonnes of compacted silt has been removed from the lake by specialist contractors Smals Dredging to create a suitable depth of water for swimming.
We’ve also installed new steps to help swimmers get in and out.
This much-needed work means we now have an all-year-round swimming and water sports destination.
The seawater leisure lake opened in 1928 as part of several inter-war tourism projects.
Regular maintenance is essential and, after storm damage and a decade without investment, it needed a major revamp.
We’ll continue to work closely with consultants and volunteer group the Weston Marine Lake Mudlarks on future arrangements, including the management of silt.
Periodic draining and cleaning of the lake is planned, as well as regular litter picking with the Cleaner Coastlines team.
There are also plans for theatre, live music events, poetry and possibly cinema on the beach.
