The Little Otter Creek Reservoir, to be located south of U.S. Highway 36 three miles east of Hamilton, Missouri, promises to bring recreation, fishing, tourism, flood management and, most of all, reliable water, to the communities of Caldwell County. But building a 350-acre lake on a stretch of prairie has proven to be challenging.
“The last two water supply reservoirs that I am familiar with that were built in Missouri are Mozingo Lake and [Willow Brook Lake] in Maysville, and those were in the early-mid-1990s,” said Cary Sayre, an engineer with Allstate Consulting who has worked on the Otter Creek project since 1998. “Getting the federal permits to build a water supply reservoir is very, very difficult.”
Movement on the project accelerated in the late 2010s. Rex Hibler joined the Caldwell County Commission in 2017, and recalls, at the time, “citizens of the county kept telling me the lake wasn’t going to get built but I was confident we were going to get through the process. The Commissioners and our partners all worked hard with the [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] to get the required permits.”
The National Resource Conservation Service has supported the reservoir as well and began working with area communities on project plans as far back as 1990. It eventually granted $15.3 million to support the construction of a dam.
The effort has long been supported by regional residents. “We’ve had droughts in the area several times over the years. And I know there are water resources that are limited in several of the townships within the county,” explained Hibler.
Although some additional water sources have been secured in the intervening decades, Hibler expects “it will still be a benefit for people’s drinking water supplies.”
“Hopefully it will be a recreational benefit,” as well, he added. “People will be able to fish on the lake and such.”
After securing funds and project approvals, acquiring 800 acres of land from regional residents, clearing trees, and finding a contractor, The Caldwell County Commission broke ground on a dam in March 2021.
Governor Mike Parson attended the ceremony. Construction was expected to take two years with a 350-acre lake filled by early 2025.
But the project site fell quiet when Phillips Hardy, the Columbia-based construction company that secured the original bid in 2021, began to experience difficulties.
For the sake of the project, Hibler said the commission and the contractor decided it was best to “part ways.”
“The project construction has sat idle for a year and half as we developed a plan to move forward” he said. “Now, we’re in the process of rebidding the project to get a new contractor on board to finish the project.”
Caldwell County will hold a pre-bid conference on Feb. 17 and will accept bids until March 10.
Even after decades, the reservoir remains critical, said Sayre.
“Any time I can get water to people that need it, it’s worth it. Growing up and in Northern Missouri, living here all my life, one of the most important things to sustain people’s livelihoods, population, economy, agriculture, is water.”
The remaining work is estimated to take three construction seasons to complete, with a reservoir operating by 2028.
Phillips Hardy did not respond to request for comment. The reservoir is not the only project it has failed to complete in the past year; it terminated work on a bridge project in Jackson County last April.
