CORPS SUCCESSFUL ON ALL ISSUES EXCEPT RECREATION

I am taking the liberty to copy a recent comment on Balancing the Basin which illuminates the failure of the Corps when it comes to protecting Recreation (meaning the recreational infrastructure around our lakes).  Some editing has been applied for the sake of clarity.

COMMENT POSTED ON MOST RECENT ISSUE OF BALANCING THE BASIN:
The Corps is doing great with all but one of the responsibilities assigned them by congress.

• Power production may not always meet quota but you get as close as possible.
• Water quality and water supply have been demonstrated to be satisfactory with spans in excess of a year at 3600cfs. 
• We have a 3 lake basin but the holding power of the last 2 have been ignored regarding flood holding capacity which gives ample flood protection.
• Protection of environmental concerns is covered well by maintaining releases above 3600cfs.
• Additionally the corps has looked past the worst case scenarios and designed a plan of which basin to destroy first and second and so on when we exceed the drought of record that put us to the bottom of the conservation pool for both Thurmond and Hartwell.

But the Corps, in doing such a superb job on all these concerns has essentially ignored the recreational infrastructure of our basin. These practices have gone to the point of destroying real estate values for homes built on the lake for recreational purposes and discouraged would be developers that would provide still more recreational access to the lakes.  The Corps has stated repeatedly that they respond immediately to any stakeholder objections to the way they are operating the basin.  This is certainly not true for recreation.

TITLE ENGINEER IN CORPS OF ENGINEERS MISLEADING

As an engineer from industry I have been totally taken back by the corps' refusal to incorporate the vast amounts of information gained over the past 15 years  to improve recreation.  With the experience gained over the last 15 years there is more than sufficient data to permit improving recreation by changes to the drought plan without doing harm to the environment or water supplies.

The title of Engineer as used in industry implies constantly using  the best data available to maximize growth of the businesses they are associated with. Growth for the Savannah River Basin is tied to it's recreational infrastructure.  Because of repeated drops in lake level in excess of 14', recreational money, whether parks and campgrounds, the various concessionaires who provide access to the lakes, or real estate built for the purpose of enjoying the recreational aspects of the basin, is going elsewhere. If this were for only a year or two one could reason that more data is needed.  But this has been going on for over 10 years and the Corps is making none of the changes that are obviously safe. Instead they insist on waiting years more to get more data before changing the drought plan. From what I've seen the fact that we haven't already made changes we know to be safe is a bad omen for what they will do after the studies are complete.

I have deliberately left the argument of SEPA power needs out of this discussion because it is such a weak reason that it deserves no consideration:

• The actual increase in cost of power to the consumer is minor when it has to be obtained from other lakes and power sources. 
• Even if the increased cost of power were substantial there is no way to justify obtaining that money by destroying the real estate values of all the people with houses around the lakes.
• SEPA has stated repeatedly that they want the lakes as full as possible because our power is primarily peaking power that comes on line during peak power consumption. That is endangered greatly when we let the lakes drop 14'