AGREEMENTS WITH CORPS ARE INEFFECTIVE

We've been pleading with the Corps to provide protection to Recreation for the lakes of  the Savannah River Basin since the turn of the century.  It is time our leaders in congress and the various organizations that represent lake stakeholders recognize that they are dealing with an organization that has no intent on responding to our requests.  Although obvious measures exist that would prevent drastic loss in lake level, the Corps is adamant in refusing to change our drought plan. It is time we recognize the Corps is not friendly to our needs and they are not going to respond to simple requests for improving the drought plan.

For Example:

• We've asked for earlier reaction to losses in lake level but the Corps blindly allows our lakes to drop when there is no environmental or economic justification for their actions. 
• We've asked that the Corps recognize that the money saved by blindly following power production quotas is not justifiable when you look at the money lost to the recreational infrastructure from drastic drops in lake levels.  But the Corps refuses to react to common sense arguments.
• We've exposed all the misleading arguments used in the past to justify no change to the drought plan but to no avail.  They simply continue to hold to failed practices realizing they don't have to justify such behavior.

Making this short and sweet. It is no surprise that our lakes are now down over 5'.  We warned the Corps repeatedly that unless they changed what they were doing we would repeat the errors of the past. But the Corps refuses to protect our recreational infrastructure. It is not as if they didn't know what their actions would cause.  Said another way, logical discussion of the situation simply doesn't work.  It is time our leaders put their foot down and demand the changes we all know are needed.

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF WHY CORPS IS NOT COOPERATING ON LAKE LEVELS

In the previous blog we pointed out that the Corps is failing to use good engineering principles to protect recreation.  Numerous questions have come in asking why we feel they are not protecting recreation.To make a long story short, there are two overlying conflicts at fault.

First the Corps insists on meeting power generation quotas even though it makes no economic sense.  The total value of the power produced from our lakes is far less than the cost to our recreational infrastructure when the lakes drop 10' or more.  Additionally South East Power Association (SEPA) has stated that we are part of 8 systems and any power deficit here can easily be met by pulling from the other lakes in these systems.  This being true the savings from straining our lake level reserves is peanuts in comparison to the loss in Recreation dollars.

Second the Corps insists on dropping our lakes 4' for winter draw down.  The figure of 4' was put in place when there was only Lake Thurmond.  Its purpose is to prevent the excessive run offs during the winter from flooding the basin.  Now that we have 3 lakes (Thurmond, Russell, and Hartwell) that same protection can be accomplished with a 2' draw down.  This extra 2' can mean a lot if we get into a severe drought. 

The combination of using good economical practices (protecting recreation over power quotas) and using a 2' draw down in the winter vs 4' can easily keep the lakes from dropping more than 10'.  While a 10' drop is undesirable, it is not catastrophic to recreation.  Once you drop more than 10' all recreational infrastructure is severely damaged from an economical standpoint.

The common excuse of waiting for results from a major study of the system is weak.  All measures described above are based on factual data obtained over the past few decades.  We don't need scientific studies to tell whether these would make good engineering sense.  The studies the Corps are conducting now can fine tune all this and maybe make it possible to even avoid a 10' drop in major droughts.  But even that will depend on applying good engineering judgment to the results of the study which the Corps continually refuses to do.  So, we have little reason to expect any benefits to recreation from these very expensive studies.  In our opinion they amount to stalling tactics and an excuse to apply even more EPA logic to our system.  If you are familiar with the EPA you will recognize such measures are frequently detrimental rather than beneficial.