What mysteries lurk beneath the weed-choked surface of Lake Kittamaqundi, the shallow waterway that serves as a picturesque focal point for Downtown Columbia?
Perhaps not many.
For several weeks, crews have been working on a large-scale dredging project that has closed sections of a well-used 1.4-mile pathway around the lake so heavy equipment can pass safely. The project and related closures are expected to run through February 2026.
Day after day, a clanking excavator scoops shovels of muck and deposits it on a barge. The dredge material is transferred to another barge, then onto a truck and hauled to the Columbia Association’s Murray Hill sediment placement site.
All this activity gave Baltimore Fishbowl a chance to ask: What have the workers been pulling up?
What’s down there, under the spot where fireworks go off every Independence Day, near the patios where quinceañera parties pose for elaborate photo shoots, where families carry hot-bar cartons from Whole Foods and gobble them by the shore?
According to Columbia Association officials who are responsible for the project, it’s pretty much just muck.
No scooters or shopping carts. No historical artifacts. No crime scene evidence.
Even though author Laura Lippman grew up nearby, there is no lady in this lake.
Contractor Lake Services Inc., which was awarded the $2 million job after a competitive bid process, has found nothing unusual, and encountered no surprises so far, officials say.
All is going to plan. If there are any buried secrets, they are still down there.
To be sure, it’s not uncommon for waterway work to yield treasures.
In Savannah, Georgia, harbor expansion maintenance work uncovered 19 Revolutionary War era cannons. Closer to home, artifacts from the 19th-century Chesapeake Bay schooner Widgeon were recovered from St. Leonard Creek in Southern Maryland.
And in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and nearby inlets, magnet fishers regularly pull up rusty handguns, e-scooters and bicycles, boat parts, tools, car parts, and the occasional 19th-century shipping hook.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that no historical artifacts or odd objects have been pulled to the surface of Lake Kittamaqundi, given its history and Columbia’s suburban planned-community heritage.
As any Maryland trivia buff knows, there are no natural lakes in the Old Line State. Anything that passes for a lake, from Deep Creek in Garrett County to Prettyboy Reservoir in Baltimore County is created by humans who built dams.
In Columbia, the central lake is perhaps more acurately categorized as a 27-acre drainage basin, built in 1966 and named after a Piscataway Indian settlement in what is now Howard County.
Per the dredging bid proposal document issued by the Columbia Association, it serves as both a community amenity and a stormwater pond, “receiving runoff from the Columbia Mall and other adjacent buildings, roads and parking lots.”
“The lake is fed by an unnamed tributary from Wilde Lake, and a low sheet pile dam exists at the outfall channel,” the RFP says. “The lake discharges to the Little Patuxent River.”
Lake Kittamaqundi was last dredged in 2014. In the current project, 15,000 cubic yards of sediment are expected to be removed, enough to fill a gym-sized basketball court up to the rim or cover a football field—end zones included—to nearly 9 inches deep. It will take 1,500 truck trips to remove it all to the placement site.
Until then, walkers, runners, bicyclists and other visitors will have to find alternative routes for their excursions, while keeping an eye open for anything that might be pulled to the surface.
But if past is prelude, there won’t be too much to see.
