Walk the edge of Round Lake this month and the shoreline sits well below where it usually does. There is a wide band of exposed mud along the banks. Orange signs and fencing block trails that were open all summer. Farther up, in the northeast corner of Lacamas Regional Park, a construction zone sits where a bridge used to be.
Two projects run by two different governments are behind it, and each has its own schedule. That is why no single reopening date covers the whole park this fall, including the Nov. 15 date printed on the county's closure map.
| The lake and dam | The northeast bridge | |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs it | City of Camas Public Works | Clark County Public Works |
| What's happening | Lakes lowered about six feet for dam inspection, repair and part replacement | Old rail-car bridge on the Lacamas Creek Trail replaced with a new steel bridge |
| Trail impact | Significant trail closures around Round Lake | All trails inside the construction area closed |
| Original timeline | Drawdown began Sept. 21, low point expected around Oct. 5 | Closure mapped Aug. 1 to Nov. 15 |
| What sets the end date | Repairs finishing, then several weeks of refilling that depend on rainfall | Plan approvals and contractor submittals, now projected for late November or early December |
The lake drops every fall. This year it stays down longer.
The City of Camas lowers Lacamas Lake and Round Lake every autumn. The city's 2026 notice says this year's drawdown started at 8 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 21. The plan was to drop both lakes by about six feet, the level needed for dam inspections and repairs.
This year adds a step. The city is also replacing parts of the dam to update it, and its notice says that is why the work needs more time.
The city's notice lays out the order of events:
- The drawdown takes a few days, with the lowest level expected around Monday, Oct. 5.
- Crews inspect the dam and make repairs, including the part replacements.
- Refilling starts only after the repairs are done.
- Refilling takes several weeks, depending on how much rain falls.
The fourth step is the one to watch. The notice gives no date for when the lake will be full again, and it couldn't. Even after crews finish, the lake comes back at whatever pace the fall rain sets.
The trail closures around Round Lake follow the same schedule. The city's notice calls them "significant trail closures around Round Lake," on top of the county's bridge closures, and asks visitors to obey the posted signs. An earlier county notice from July said trails near the dam would stay open, with flaggers directing walkers whenever equipment moved. The county's own map marked a small area near the dam closed from Sept. 15 to Nov. 15. The city's September notice is the more recent of the two. Treat the posted signs, not the summer map, as the current rule.
What six feet of missing water uncovered
Lowering the lake also opens a short yearly window to see, and remove, what sits on the bottom.
The Camas-Washougal Post-Record reported that volunteers from the Lacamas Watershed Council found four metal drums and a derelict boat in Round Lake in late 2025, plus a car that may still be underwater. This fall's drawdown exposed the debris again. Washington State Department of Ecology staff inspected the site on Sept. 30. They removed two of the four drums and reported the boat to the state Department of Natural Resources. They could not find the car.
The Lacamas Watershed Council is a Camas nonprofit that works on water quality in Lacamas, Round and Fallen Leaf lakes. The cleanup depends on the lake being low, so the time left for this year's work ends when refilling begins.
The bridge that split the park
The second project has nothing to do with the water level. It is about a bridge built from two old rail cars.
The Columbian reported that the bridge sits on the main access road in the park's northeast corner, used by both walkers and park maintenance vehicles. The rail cars had been exposed to weather for years and had started to rust. Evelyn Ives, project manager with the county's parks and lands division, told the paper the bridge was still considered safe for pedestrians. The concern was that it could collapse under a work truck.
The replacement is a prefabricated steel bridge with a concrete deck. The old bridge was about 20 feet wide. The new one will be 12 feet wide and 5 to 10 feet longer on each side of the creek. The project also includes replanting native plants and environmental mitigation in the work areas.
The closure has hit this crossing hard because of where it sits. A Camas resident told The Columbian the work site "bisects the park." He said you can no longer cross it, which also ends a safe route for cyclists heading across the city. Ives told the paper there is no safe detour because the bridge is such a critical piece of that trail section.
Why the crews went quiet
If you have walked past the bridge site recently and seen no one working, the county has explained why.
The county's Sept. 18 update on its Lacamas Regional Park page said crews removed the old bridge and leftover culvert debris in August. The next step, installing the foundation, was waiting on a review of design calculations. Work on site would resume once the plans were approved. Ives told The Columbian the contractor was working through submittals, the routine requests for materials and equipment. She said they had nothing to do with permits.
Environmental permits explain why the trails closed in August, before everything was ready. "In a normal situation, we probably would have just delayed the start date," Ives told the paper. The demolition and in-water work had to happen during the permitted work window.
The bridge was originally expected to be done by Nov. 15. The Columbian now reports it will likely finish in late November or early December. The county's July notice had already warned that weather and other unpredictable factors could shift the schedule.
The money is on track even though the schedule isn't. Nutter Corp. won the construction contract with a $485,000 bid, against an engineering estimate of $811,000. Design, survey and permitting by Dowl LLC added $470,000, and permits added $135,000, bringing the total to more than $1 million. Ives told The Columbian the project was running about $70,000 under budget.
The paper also reported that after fencing on one closed trail was cut down again and again, the contractor stopped replacing it and left that trail open. The county still asks visitors to stay out of construction areas whether or not crews are working. Heavy equipment, unstable ground and hidden hazards remain on site.
Two schedules, and one more project on the lake
Put the two projects together and the November picture looks like this. The bridge depends on plan approval and a contractor schedule that has already moved past Nov. 15. The Round Lake trails and the water level depend on the city's repair work, then on rain. The two can finish weeks apart in either order, and the park won't feel fully open until both are done.
A third, smaller project has touched the lake this year. The City of Camas scheduled the Leadbetter boat ramp to close on Aug. 21 to stage an alum treatment, which is meant to reduce harmful algal blooms. The city said the ramp would reopen once that work was finished, so check its Lacamas Lake management page for the ramp's current status before towing a boat over.
On the water itself, the most recent Lacamas Lake samples in the Northwest Toxic Algae database, taken Oct. 12, 2026, showed anatoxin-a below detection and microcystin at 5.9 micrograms per liter. Both are listed as not exceeding the state guideline. The Oct. 5 samples are listed the same way. The database warns that results can lag behind sampling. Clark County's routine swim-beach monitoring runs Memorial Day through Labor Day, and the county updates advisories as conditions change.
Where updates will show up first
The county says it will post bridge schedule and closure changes on its Lacamas Regional Park page. The county directs questions about the dam work to the City of Camas Public Works office, which announced the drawdown on its notice page. The park's trails also connect to the Lacamas Heritage Trail along the south shore of Lacamas Lake. For loop walkers, that matters while the northeast crossing is out. For more on the rest of town, see our Camas neighborhood guide.
The fall drawdown is part of life near the water here, and we wrote about the lake through the rest of the year in Living Near Lacamas Lake. If you're thinking about a home near Round Lake or the Heritage Trail and want to know how the seasons change it, David Merrick is glad to walk through it with you. Let's Connect.