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News & Observer(Print Friendly) : http : //www . newsobserver . com/tu . . , /909734p - 907336c . htm Page 1 of 2c n e o b r v r. c o m Published : Tuesday , February 12 , 2002 3 : 33 a . m . EST DURANT NATURE PARK : LAKES RECOVERING Murkybut healthy Creatures thriving in waters sullied by 1 =540 construction project By JAMES ELI SNIFFER , Staff Writer RALEIGH - Workers fought the mud with heavy equipment , floating nets , buckets and chemicals . But the remnants of a muddy mishap during the construction of the Outer Loop last year still stain the waters in Raleigh ' s premier nature park . Eleven months ago , a botched effort to reroute a stream around Interstate 540 near Gresham Lake Road allowed tons of red mud to wash into Durant Nature Park , a 237 - acre oasis of trees and water among new highways , apartments and warehouses . The plume of soil made a thick brown soup of the park ' s two lakes . Since then , park workers have pronounced the lakes " thriving " after analyzing water samples and finding plenty of creatures living in the cloudy waters . " It looks pretty bad , " said Martha Flanagan , Raleigh ' s city naturalist , as she gazed at the coffee -with - cream - colored waters of the upper lake Thursday morning . " But it seems to be healthy . " The two lakes lost their crystal clarity well before the city of Raleigh acquired the old Boy Scout camp off Durant Road in 1978 . Still , on most days the two lakes retained a certain green - blue hue , capturing the reflections of surrounding pines and inviting canoeists , anglers and swimmers . The sudden mud bath arrived in March 2001 . A nearby homeowner and avid fly-fisherman , David H . Moody , walked to the creek between his back yard and the Outer Loop site and saw , to his horror , a river of red soil coursing down the hill . State environmental officials called the bungled stream relocation the worst sedimentation violation caused by the highway project . The N . C . Department of Transportation stopped the work and sent in crews to haul out heaps of dirt , bucket by bucket , and dump it on higher ground . More muck had escaped downstream into the park ' s upper lake . Rocks and logs poking out of the water were stained red . Officials with DOT and Raleigh ' s parks and recreation department conferred on what to do . They considered a kind of lake transfusion -- pumping out the water , mixing in a chemical that would clump the mud and pumping the water back in - - but the lakeshore was too crowded with trees to set up the necessary heavy equipment . They also ruled out dumping tons of gypsum into the water . They settled on two measures to keep the problem from getting worse . Eco Turf Inc . , a Raleigh erosion control company , installed flocculant logs and particle curtains . The logs , placed in the creek feeding the lake and the spillway between the lakes , slowly released the dirt- clumping chemical into the water . The curtains , attached to lengths of PVC pipe , floated in the water to capture the thicker silt . Clayton Phillis , president of Eco Turf , said he has seen worse sedimentation than what happened in Durant Park . Phillis said he thinks the lake " cleared up a bit" as a result of his efforts . DOT estimates its cleanup cost $ 105 , 0008 Eco Turf' s contract expired last summer . Since then , some of the particle curtains have washed away . Mounds of mud remain in the winding creek , imprinted with raccoon tracks , washed periodically downstream with every http : //cgi . newsobserver . com/ standing/help/tools/_scripts/ friendly-pnnt . cgi 02/ 12 /2002