WHAT IS MORSE WATERWAYS ASSOCIATION?

Morse Waterways Association (MWA) was founded in May 2005 to serve the Morse Reservoir community promoting safety and the environment. MWA is a Not for profit organization.

Here are some of the projects which MWA has initiated and/or supported over the last 4 years.

• Annual Safety Awareness Days to promote safety working with the DNR and Noblesville Police handing out Indiana Boating Guidelines.
• Annual Lake Cleanup. Each year we work with volunteers hauling tons of trees, trash and brush from the reservoir. Check our web site for pictures from the past.
• Dock Address Signs. Working with the Hamilton County Sheriff’s department, Noblesville and Cicero, MWA helped raise funding and awareness to place numbered signs on docks. This system helps to identify your location on the water in case of emergency. These dock signs are linked to the home owners street address for faster emergency response.
• Water Quality Study. With a $47,700 grant from Lake and River Enhancement (LARE) through the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, MWA has recently begun a water diagnostic study.
• Our Web Site www.morseH2o.org was developed as a resource and information destination for Morse Reservoir. We have links to local weather and water level. We update the web site with news from our association and our projects and provide links to local community web sites.

MWA operates exclusively on donations. If you would like to donate to our organization to help support our efforts, please use the PayPal feature on our web site or make check out to Morse Waterways Association and send check to Jim Schneider, 2460 Cape Henry Ct., Cicero, IN 46034. - All donations are tax deductible!

History

Morse Reservoir is in north-central Hamilton County, 3.2 mi northwest of Noblesville and approximately 22 mi north-northeast of Indianapolis, and is formed by the impoundment of Cicero Creek. The reservoir has a design storage capacity of 25,380 acre-ft (8.27 Bgal) at normal pool elevation; a surface area of approximately 1,500 acres; and approximately 32.5 mi of shoreline (Thomas Bruns, Indianapolis Water Company, written commun., 1996). Normal pool elevation is 810 ft above sea level. The reservoir is approximately 6.5 mi long and varies in width from several hundred feet to more than 2,000 ft. Cicero Creek has a drainage area of 214 mi2 at Morse dam (Hoggatt, 1975).

Morse and Geist Reservoirs in central Indiana are used primarily for public water supply and secondarily for recreation. The Indianapolis Water Company (IWC), which owns the reservoirs, and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) recognized the potential for sedimentation to affect the capacity of the two reservoirs and the need for data to assess the status of sedimentation in them and their current capacity.

The IDNR is mandated by the 1983 Water Resource Management Act to assess water-resource availability, water use, and conflicts involving limited water supply or competing uses (Indiana Department of Natural Resources, 1994). IDNR has been assessing water availability on a regional scale by major drainage basin. Information on the current capacities of Morse and Geist Reservoirs will be important to the assessment of water availability in the White River Basin.

Additional Information for both Morse and Geist Reservoirs may be found at the following link: http://in.water.usgs.gov/bathymetry.web/index.shtml

Water-depth contour map : http://in.water.usgs.gov/bathymetry.web/bath.report.fig7.html