WHY DOES OUR LAKE LEVEL DILEMMA CONTINUE

Thurmond and Hartwell should be famous Recreation Spots with tremendous growth potential.  But the horrible lake level control during droughts has and is destroying our reputation which in turn is destroying recreation along our lakes.

The Corps has done two studies of what poor lake level control does to our economics.  But both were badly flawed.  The first study was so highly restricted in what variables to measure that they measured the economic variations of surrounding counties rather than what was happening to communities along the lakes. Both the first and second study were badly flawed because they only looked at variations inside the period of a horrible reputation. The true measure would be to look at where our recreational infrastructure could be with great level control.  That of course is impossible to measure from inside the time of poor level controls.

Congress in the 80's added recreation to the mix of things the Corps is responsible for on our lakes.  Any fool should recognize that protecting recreation can only be accomplished by protecting the infrastructure needed for recreation to occur. The major cause of our dilemma is THE CORPS REFUSES TO PROTECT THE BASIC ELEMENTS OF RECREATION AND OUR CONGRESSMEN REFUSE TO CORRECT THEM. For example the Corps when questioned often explains that fishing is fine and therefore recreation is fine.  All anyone needs to do to understand what I mean is look at the Grand Strand on the coast of SC. Try telling them they would be a famous recreation areas without all the infrastructure such as real estate and hotels and motels involved in accommodating the public.  Try telling them that a bad reputation such as poor lake level control has no impact on that infrastructure.