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WACO, Texas (KWTX) - Lake Waco is a popular destination for Central Texans celebrating the 4th of July and, unfortunately, two months after severe rainfall and flooding caused its water levels to rise 20 feet above normal, its parks and campgrounds will remain closed to the public over the Independence Day holiday weekend.

The lake is currently about two feet above normal, but that is not enough for the Army Corps of Engineers to reopen the lake areas to the public.

“You can see how close to the road this water is right now, and this is just two feet high so you can imagine 18 more feet is what you saw out here so… all of this was completely underwater,” Michael Champagne with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers described.

Because of damage caused by severe flooding, most of the parks and campgrounds on Lake Waco are still fully closed almost two months later, and it’s not hard to see why.

“The most obvious damage is always debris,” Champagne explained, “you can see behind me we’ve got a bunch of woody debris. Usually, it’s a combination of trees and mulch and trash and other things that have come down the rivers and floated up.”

Then there is the damage to the roads, buildings, and campsites, which will either have to be repaired or replaced.

Champagne said they “had at least 80 to 100 campsites that were underwater.”

“So each one of those campsites has a fire ring, a grill, a picnic table, an electrical pedestal, and a water spigot, so any one of those things could have been damaged - or all of them could have been damaged,” Champagne said.

He explained that they were only just recently able to get into some of the parks within the last week or two, finally able to see the extent of the damage.

“As it’s come down we’ve been able to make assessments and start even making repairs,” he said.

But there’s still a lot more to access before they’re able to determine when each park could reopen to the public.

“We’re looking at a couple weeks at least before we can start having some more things open,” Champagne shared, “we’re hoping to have some campgrounds open by the end of the month, but as we’re turning on utilities right now we’re finding more damage.”

So for the 4th of July this Thursday all of the parks will sadly be closed, but they have opened up the boat ramps at Speegleville Campground and Twin Bridges Park if people want to get out on the lake.

However, there is still a lot of debris in the lake so Central Texans are urged to be aware of their surroundings while driving the boat or swimming in case of anything underwater that you can’t see.

Click here for a full list of park and campground closures for lake Waco.