ASHLAND -- Bureau of Land Management officials will meet tonight with Greensprings residents who want to halt the agency's plans for removing Little Hyatt Lake.

Saying the 74-year-old dam is falling apart and that it cannot legally impound water, the BLM has announced it will remove the dam this year and restore the Keene Creek channel upstream of it.

But many people in the area want the idyllic lake and its population of stocked rainbow trout to remain for camping, angling and picnicking.

Residents want the BLM to leave the lake and dam as-is, or help find ways to strengthen the dam and reduce BLM's liability for keeping it, said Ron Schaaf, one of the area's pro-dam organizers.

The meeting will begin at 7 tonight at the Greensprings Inn's Forest Room. The public is invited, and four BLM officials are expected to attend.

The 10-acre lake sits on Keene Creek behind the old dam, which was built to help divert irrigation water from the Greensprings area of the Klamath Basin over to the Bear Creek basin and into Emigrant Lake.