As indicated in the recent Balancing the Basin the Corps is planning to construct (at a cost of millions of dollars) a fish ladder that will put our lakes in extreme jeopardy. The reasoning is that deepening the Savannah harbor will decrease the spawning area for short nosed sturgeon. Their plan sounds innocent enough. They want to allow the sturgeon access to the Savannah River upstream of the lock and dam just South of Augusta.
If the sturgeon start spawning in the rapids north of Augusta, as they most certainly would, the release rates from Thurmond Dam would suddenly be controlled by flow rates through the rapids. This is so preposterous it is hard to believe anyone would even consider such a measure. But it shows once again that the Corps is not doing their job in protecting our lakes. It appears that they would just as soon destroy the lakes as not.
SOLN has registered numerous complaints about this plan but they have fallen on deaf ears. Please contact your governor, your congressman, and your senator and insist that they stop this madness. You probably should make your concerns known to Col. Tickner as well although based on past experience this may be a futile effort.
Part of this plan is for the corps to train the sturgeon to climb the fish ladder around the lock and dam. This smacks of the idiocy of similar measures out West where the Corps actually trucks Salmon past dams so they can spawn. Our contention is the sturgeon are not limited to the Savannah River. They have been shown to spawn at other locations.
A side note, the next idiocy will be to try to use river flows to prevent the salt migration that most assuredly will occur. It doesn't matter that the river compared to the ocean tides entering the harbor is like a garden hose flowing into the river.
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