What I Recommend Now and For the Future

As with any project we are learning as we go. We now realize that Col. Kertis who is the commander for the Army Corps of Engineers responsible for Lakes Thurmond, Russell, and Hartwell can not or will not make changes to the drought plan on his own. It really matters little which is the case. The important thing is we have to look elsewhere if we are going to save our lakes.

It seems to me that before we try somewhere else to get changes, we need to think through what changes we want. From the outset I have said that as long as you put more water through the dam than comes down from rain you are doomed to fail. In other words this by definition will drain the lakes over a period of time. As soon as we recommend that we limit water through the dam to what comes in from rain the naysayers imagine the river drying up. And they pull out dozens of reasons this won't work talking about endangered species, water quality, and any of a number of other considerations. Immediately you come to an impasse.

If you suggest a flow of 3100cfs instead of the 3600cfs that is our current flow through the dam, everyone imagines that this would only be token improvement and no one is willing to fight that hard to secure this flow level. I think most of the anti 3100 sentiment think that downstream would probably be OK but they also see the gain from 3100 too small to be worth all the effort.
The myriad imagined problems downstream seem too huge and the gain at 3100 too small to fight for.

Just recently however the Corps gave us some numbers on the Austin Rhodes show that indicate that the flow in from rain during this drought is about equal to 3100cfs. In other words if we had gone to 3100 cfs when Lake Thurmond reached 328 ft (2 feet below normal fill) the lakes would still be full. This now changes the arguments. If the lakes were still full everyone whether they are downstream of the dam or upstream would benefit. It would have eliminated the current fear that the lakes may dry up completely which would reek havoc downstream as well as around the lake. This end warrants hard core investigation of what 3100 does downstream if anything. This end warrants investigation into how to live with 3100 downstream to prevent the crisis we now are faced with.

So, in view of this new information my recommendation for the future would be to use 3100cfs based on this worst drought situation. And we should initiate the 3100cfs flow as soon as the lake drops 2 ft. This should be Continued until the lake refills.

My recommendation for now would be to go to 3100cfs now and determine from this what changes are needed downstream if any to permit continued operation at 3100 cfs.