Waco, lake restoration zoo for gibbon and lemur exhibits

But the solution will be neither quick nor cost-effective.

Zoo director Brendan Wiley, who took over as director there about a year ago, spoke to the Tribune-Herald on Thursday about restoring Gibbon Lake and a vision for the zoo as an educational and tourist tentpole for the city.

Leaks in the pond, formerly known as Green Lake, prompted zoo staff to drain it in January 2020 and begin searching for the leaks and developing repair plans.

“We will see a spike in visitors in March with spring break visitors and I wish we could say the repairs will be completed by then and will cost less than $1 million, but it will likely take longer and “also cost more,” Wiley said.

The city’s 2024-25 budget book shows no money for capital projects at the zoo, while $277,000 is earmarked for maintenance.

Wiley said the Public Works Department will take the lead in restoring Gibbon Lake, and he expects the repairs will be funded with savings created by reducing the zoo’s water fees while draining the lake .

“These savings were used to fund repairs in fiscal year 2025,” Wiley said. “The only expenditure so far has been ground studies, survey work and engineering work relating to the shorelines.”

The design process under the city’s public works department will be completed soon, meaning the bid package should be ready this month and a contractor should be hired by February, Wiley said. Officials hope the work can be completed by the end of next year. However, a more specific timeline for on-site work will become clearer once the city hires a contractor.

“In terms of cost, the initial scope will include maintaining and stabilizing the shoreline as well as creating a water curtain in the ground around the seawall and deck piers,” Wiley said. “There will also be some revisions to the pond bottom.”

Once the work is complete, a break will be taken to test the pond’s ability to store water. If additional work is required, the costs will increase.

Because the natural structure of the soil, shale and limestone surrounding man-made Gibbon Lake tends to change over time, the water feature may need to be shored up every 10 to 12 years, Wiley said.

The pond was created decades before the zoo opened in 1993, and Tribune-Herald archives from the 1930s refer to it as Green Lake, a popular fishing spot.

As Wiley approached the trail on the downstream side of Gibbon Lake on Thursday, he pointed out two spots less than 20 feet apart where ground technicians had taken core samples to study the composition of the underlying structures and to understand. He said engineers found that limestone, shale and other materials beneath the trail varied several feet in depth. Subsurface limestone and shale tend to erode and shift much more quickly than other more geologically stable rock forms, changing and shifting on time horizons measured in years and decades rather than centuries.

After the drainage, city staff began and hired experts to investigate the leaks and found several sources.

“See those concrete piles in the deck foundation over there? “These penetrate the clay lining of the lake bottom, so significant amounts end up in the soil beneath the pond around many of them,” Wiley said. “We also found that while the storm sewer pipe that carries overflow from the lake downstream into the Brazos River remains stable, water also drains around it, following the path of the waterline all the way to the river.”

Wiley said the islands where the gibbons and lemurs were once the star attractions need to be shored up and expanded to replace soil that has eroded and shrunk in size.

Trees within the decks at Gibbon Lake were also pushing the decks out of balance, and support structures beneath the decks would also need to be replaced or rebuilt, he said.

Once repairs are complete, water could flow through the pond again and gibbons and lemurs could return to the islands.

Wiley has also completed projects and plans to increase the number of circulating water features at the zoo, another part of water conservation.

“We expect there to be eight primary outdoor water features that we count toward this project,” Wiley said. “This excludes the numerous aquariums or water enclosures such as otters, alligators or caimans.”

The main eight include: Gibbon Lake, Plaza Waterfall, Tiger Waterfall, Giraffe Waterfall and connecting giraffe and rhino moats, Jaguar Waterfall and stream, South America Waterfall. The last two were built as recirculating systems in the early 2000s and still operate that way.

The waterfall in one of the tiger habitats was converted to recirculating water this year, as were the one on the square and the one in the giraffe habitat, with pipes added to the slope sides to collect the water and pumps added to recirculate it, he said.

“By recirculating the water in the exhibits, we save significant amounts of money that would otherwise be spent purchasing water at the water department,” Wiley said.

The savings from water recirculation could fund a significant portion of the repairs, which include switching to recirculation.

“Next we will work on the irrigation systems and then we can start reducing our electric bill,” Wiley said.

As part of Wiley’s visioning process, the city and the Cameron Park Zoological & Botanical Society recently agreed to split the cost of studying zoo operations to gain a fundamental understanding of how the two groups’ budgets will be used to make the zoo operate better can be efficient and effective for animals and visitors.

“We had over 310,000 visitors to the zoo recently and I think there could be 100,000 more,” Wiley said. “But if I’m off by 50,000 in both cases, that could mean a jump in sales from $750,000 to $1.5 million.”

Wiley said the zoo’s attendance needs to be measured based on that area and comparable zoos in other Texas counties and across the United States. He said benchmarking visitor numbers is part of the governance study, which will provide an accurate understanding of the zoo’s processes, procedures, budgets and expenditure.

A significant portion of the 310,000 visitors came on school trips from throughout the immediate area and as far away as Georgetown to the south and Tarrant County to the north.

Wiley said the zoo and the city should work together to increase traffic to restaurants near the zoo related to these outings. He also said efforts should be made to invite family members and companions of students to Waco as visitors.