Former dump site near Tallinn transformed into lake with public beach
A former landfill in Männiku, Harju County, has been turned into a new lake with a public swimming beach. The lake's name still awaits formal approval from local authorities.
A site that held a landfill just seven years ago has become the newest addition to the Männiku Quarry in Harju County, Estonia — now reshaped into a lake. After the area was excavated and cleared, Saku Municipality commissioned company TREV2 to build a public beach along its shore.
TREV2 mining engineer Paul Toomik said the beach was constructed with a very gentle slope: even about ten meters from the shoreline, the water remains only a meter deep, creating a large, safe area for children to swim.
While the surrounding sand quarry currently still looks somewhat bare, Toomik expects the area to grow more appealing as newly planted pine trees along the lake mature. Access to the site should also improve once operations at a neighboring quarry wind down next year.
TREV2 has already given the new lake an informal name — Toomiku Lake — honoring the engineer who has worked at the quarry throughout its development. Whether the name becomes official, however, rests with Saku Municipality and Estonia's Land and Spatial Development Board, which will only take up the matter once a formal application is filed.
Annika Lebert, a chief specialist at the Land and Spatial Development Board, explained that any name must comply with Estonia's Place Names Act and language rules, and should relate to the location itself. She noted no objections to "Toomiku," describing it as a pleasant, unremarkable Estonian name. Old maps show the site was little more than sand and open fields a century ago, while a nearby road, Tooma tee, already carries a similar name.
