To make it all the way around Columbia's Lake Kittamaqundi, walkers and runners have to leave the paved pathway near the northeast end of the lake and travel along a rough dirt track surrounded by trees and exposed roots.

"It's kind of a little disappointment when you get there," said Garry Chandler, chairman of the Town Center Village Board. "It's like walking through the woods, literally, you have to pick your way through."

With the aim of making navigation around the shore significantly easier, the Town Center Village Board is lobbying the Columbia Association to pave the last unfinished quarter of the pathway.

But construction of any type of walkway through that area might prove difficult because the unpaved stretch is on a flood plain.

During heavy rainstorms, the Little Patuxent River - which runs alongside Kittamaqundi - can rise out of its banks and run into the 27-acre manmade lake, carrying large amounts of sediment. The dirt pathway shows grooves where the river water has traveled to the lake.

In a report to the Columbia Revitalization Planning Committee, the village board acknowledged the difficulties posed by the flood plain but requested that the county, state and Columbia Association join together to fund a paved pathway, a suspension bridge or boardwalk in the area.

"It would be one of the final touches to Town Center," Chandler said. "You feel like the lake is three-quarters finished."

But the Columbia Association's priority for that area is to dredge Lake Kittamaqundi and return the Little Patuxent River to its original configuration to prevent large accumulations of sediment in the lake, said Chick Rhodehamel, the association's vice president for open-space management.

The association's board of directors has given approval - in straw votes - for the open-space management division to spend $1 million on the project, contingent on getting an additional $1 million from the Howard County government or another source.

Howard officials have indicated that they have no interest in providing the matching grant.

The proposed dredging and river work "determines whether that area still exists in the future and is not altered by Mother Nature's changes," Rhodehamel said, adding that the pathway could be considered if work is eventually done in that area.

Rhodehamel said construction of a pathway, which would disrupt the natural habitat there, would need state and federal approval. Because of the complex location, a proposal for a path would be "something that needs to be well-engineered, well-looked at, reviewed by multiple agencies and maybe turned down," Rhodehamel said.

It is easier to walk around the association's other two lakes - Lake Elkhorn and Wilde Lake. Elkhorn has a complete paved path around it, while most of the Wilde Lake route is paved, with the pathway leading people briefly up onto a street to avoid residential yards that back onto the lake.

In the late 1980s, a bridge to carry pedestrians along the northeast end of Lake Kittamaqundi was proposed as part of a renovation of the lakefront plaza. But the project, which would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, proved too costly for the association and the county, Rhodehamel said.

But that has not squelched some residents' passionate pursuit of a completed pathway. Newcomers to Town Center sometimes call the village office, wondering why the path does not extend around the lake, Chandler said.

Even as Rhodehamel was walking on the dirt pathway recently, a family stopped him and inquired if there were plans to pave it.

The village board periodically reminds the association of the village's interest in completing the pathway, to make sure the project is kept "on the radar," said Patricia B. Laidig, Town Center's village manager.

Some residents - primarily those whose homes abut the lake - feel that a complete pathway would add more traffic to the area and deter littering, vandalism and loitering, Laidig said.

Rhodehamel said he does not have a personal opinion on whether the pathway should be completed, noting that there are other projects on which his department must focus.

"I don't disagree that it would be nice," he said. "But there's a lot to be considered and checked out."

Despite the construction obstacles, Chandler is optimistic that residents will some day be able to walk around the lake without having to dodge tree branches.

If the pathway proposal "is put on the table and kept on the table, I think it's a project that can be completed, probably within five years," he said. "But it's going to take a lot to make sure it doesn't disappear."