After more than two months of preparations to dredge Columbia's Lake Elkhorn, the project was shut down for the winter before any sediment was drawn from the lake.

According to a Columbia Association announcement, the freezing temperatures made it impossible to use equipment designed to extract the water from the silt. Work stopped just before Christmas and is expected to resume around mid-March.

Currently, the lake is frozen over.

The Columbia Association is also awaiting a waiver approval from the Maryland Department of the Environment that is required before dredging can begin, a spokeswoman said.

The $5.2 million project is to remove about 80 percent of the silt that has built up in the lake since it was created in the mid 1970s.

Pipes have been extended to various parts of the lake, a dredge boat is in the water, a digging machine sits on a barge near the lake's dock, and an asphalt lot is partly completed near the Broken Land Parkway parking lot, but no dredging has been done yet.

-Larry Carson