About 50 area business and homeowners attended the 20-minute meeting where the Village Board announced that the state Department of Transportation will handle repairs to the breached area of the lake and Highway A, with the goal of restoring the lake by the spring. The village is working to create a diversion channel in the lake to direct water to its intended outlet at the dam, which should be completed this week.

Heavy rain and a breach in the northeast portion of Lake Delton on June 9 created a new passage for the lake's water to the Wisconsin River, destroying five homes, 300 feet of Highway A and draining the lake.

Lake Delton officials are working with Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state Department of Natural Resources to resolve a question over the elevation of its 100-year floodplain, which caused the community to be dropped from the program in 2001 after no action was taken by the board to approve a floodplain map.

"It wasn't on anybody's radar that it was a significant problem," said village attorney Richard Cross of parts of the village being compromised by floods.

The village is now in the process of accepting that 2001 map and plans to adjust the elevations as needed once improvements to the dam are completed in 2009, Cross said.

However, even if Lake Delton is accepted into the program, there's no guarantee how much disaster assistance home and business owners will receive, Cross said.

The vast majority of the nation's 20,000 flood-prone communities participate in the National Flood Insurance Program, but about one in 10 opts out, according to the National Association of State Floodplain Mangers in Madison. Representatives from the association have said officials fear that joining the program will stunt economic growth by boosting construction costs and restricting the ability to build in high-risk flood areas.

Wally Bochenczak, who owns Thunderbird Resorts on Lake Delton with his wife, said he was disappointed in Monday's meeting because he thought there would be more information.

He also questions how quickly the repairs to the lake breach and the highway will be made.

"We need speed because this is our livelihood," said Bochenczak, who's lost 75 percent of his reservations for July and August.

Because most people make reservations at his eight-house resort in January and February, Bochenczak said he doesn't know what he'll be able promise people in terms of a lake next summer.

"We're really going to take a beating on this," he said.