MORE THOUGHTS ON ECONOMICS OF LAKE LEVEL

In my last blog I pointed out numerous examples of how low lake levels have a huge dollar value especially when you look at real estate values. But even larger costs are incurred if you look at the impact on future growth. Analyzing the lake area as a stagnant entity misses the fact that future growth could swamp anything we can see now. For example look at areas like the Massanutten Ski Resort in Virginia. They struggled for years and years before finally attracting vacationers from the Washington DC area. Now the tourism there literally swamps anything imagined 10 years ago. Any impact study has to look at what happens to future growth to give a realistic picture of how lake level variations affect the economy.

An analogy to how low lake levels affect our current local economy would be to look at how an unplanned land fill would affect a real estate development during a poor economy. First the unplanned land fill would cause all the nearby property to drop in value. If the economy is bad at the same time the impact on local sales such as gas station volumes, grocery store sales, etc. would be very small. With a poor economy and decreased land values due to the land fill, the occupants of the community would be caught in a vice and be unable to leave the area. Hence gas sales, grocery sales, etc. would not be affected that much. But if you look at what is lost in terms of future growth of the community it is enormous because no one would want to buy or build in such an undesirable area.

A similar thing is happening right now for the local communities around Thurmond. The poor lake level control we've encountered in recent droughts are just as distasteful as an unplanned land fill would be to a real estate development. As in the example above measurements of current impact will not be major because everyone is hanging on for dear life. If we have another poor level performance we may finally see major impacts because many businesses around the lake can not endure another slow down. But neither of these can compare to the impact on future development. What hotel would seriously consider coming here. And numerous developments that would have a major impact on the area will have a hard time getting started once the economy improves because of the distastfullness of poor level control.