The lake, which is owned by the city of Alamogordo although it lies within Lincoln County, was devastated by rivers of sediment deposited after the 2012 Little Bear Fire burned the watershed above it.
"It's all good news, we're moving ahead," Bob Johnson, contract coordinator for the Alamogordo Public Woks Department, said Thursday. "The cultural and biological studies are completed and there are no spotted owl habitats within a quarter mile, so we will not be restricted to just working six months out of the year."
The lake, which was a water supply source for the city of Alamogordo and Holloman Air Force Base, as well as a popular recreation site before Little Bear Fire, has been closed since June 2012. A main drainage line from the lake clogged in August, but was cleared, and Johnson said the lake nearly was drained completely Thursday.
"There's at least 50 feet of sediment (on the bottom), much more than we anticipated," he said.
But steps for recovery of the lake are unfolding as anticipated, he said.
During a report on the lake as part of a forest health series at Eastern New Mexico University-Ruidoso in August, Johnson told the audience that because of the amount of material that washed into the lake after the fire and the logistics of dredging, Bonito Lake probably will not reopen until late 2017.
Every time the area experiences a heavy rain, which was frequently this summer, more ash and debris rolled down from the watershed, he said.
"The South Fork has not run fully yet," he said. "That is an event waiting to happen."
When the lake was full, it held 1,500 acre feet of water, King said. One acre foot equates to 325,853 gallons of water.