LAKE DELTON — It's unlikely that Lake Delton, one of the centerpieces of the Wisconsin Dells-area tourism economy, will be refilled this summer, a village official says.

Tom Diehl, a Lake Delton Village Board member and co-owner of the Tommy Bartlett Show, said Tuesday that plugging the shoreline breach that drained the lake and then refilling the lake will probably take months and could cost as much as $10 million.

Members of the Village Board heard the news during a one-hour emergency meeting Tuesday with officials from the state Department of Natural Resources.

Gov. Jim Doyle emphasized in a news conference later that he wants to see the lake refilled.

"It's very important to me, to everybody, that we restore Lake Delton," Doyle said. "There are 20 resorts along that lake. It's a very high priority for us to get that done."

The breach, which took out a section of Highway A, will have to be closed by basically building another dam, DNR officials said. The floodwaters displaced about 85,000 cubic yards of sand, they said.

Andy Morton, lower Wisconsin basin supervisor for the DNR, said the lake will be refilled but added it is unclear when.

"It's important that whatever we do is done to state standards," Morton added.

Greg Matthews, a DNR spokesman, said Tuesday that engineers were hoping to divert Dell Creek from where it now flows through the shoreline break by building a dam across the creek and guiding it back to its natural channel. That will be necessary before any work can be done to close the break, Matthews added.

Even if a dam across the break is completed this summer, Diehl said, it could take 45 to 60 days for Dell Creek to fill the lake again.

Diehl said he believes nothing could have been done to prevent the loss of the lake. He said workers sandbagged the dam beginning at 2 a.m. Monday morning and thought they had done a good job of diverting water flow from around and over the dam. And the dam did hold.

"You couldn't have prevented this under any scenario," Diehl said.

Meanwhile, the empty lake appeared Tuesday to become one of the tourist area's newest and most popular tourist attractions. People stood along the shorelines marveling at the odds and ends in the mud, including dozens of anchors and a field of tree stumps.

Rose Marie Bruns, 70, of Elgin, Ill., drove from her summer home in nearby Lyndon Station to take a look. "I wanted to see what happened," Bruns said. "I hate destruction and water is very dangerous. People don't understand how damaging water is."