The Franklin County Conservation Board is seeking public input on a possible agreement with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to take over management of Beeds Lake State Park, north of Hampton.
Franklin County Conservation Director, Ned Parker, tells RadioOnTheGo News the conservation board was contacted by the DNR earlier this year about a possible agreement and says conversations are still ongoing.
“Their proposal was basically to inquire if we had any interest in coming with a management agreement between us and the Iowa DNR for the responsibilities of taking care of Beeds Lake State Park. They’re in a unique position in that the park ranger, who has been out at the park for many years, has retired. And so there is a vacancy there. So they thought they’d take the opportunity to see if this was something we’d be interested in. It is something that there are a number of other county conservation boards across the state that manage state parks.”
One of those parks include Heery Woods State Park in Butler County. Parker says the conservation board will consider all public input and is still deciding whether the agreement makes sense from a financial standpoint.
“We don’t want an additional park to become a burden on our budget. We have limited resources. We can’t just go acquire a bunch of new funding to do updates at this park. And so that’s one of the things that I’m working on is trying to figure out what kind of agreement we could come to where we think it would be beneficial for us. Some of the things that we as a County Conservation Board are not interested in taking on the risk would be the dam itself. It’s in need of a number of repairs and that’s not something that we would have in our budget. They’ll be putting in a new septic system to tie in with the City of Hampton. A very expensive project. I think it’ll be a good thing when it’s done but that’s another thing that the county doesn’t want to have the responsibility of maintenance and repairs and that sort of thing.”
If you would like to share your thoughts on the proposed agreement, you can find a link to the conservation board’s survey here.
