If you've followed my blog for any time you realize we are not making exaggerated claims for better management of Lake Levels at Lake Thurmond. Our basic reasoning is that the Corps can not create water and until they are able to do so lake releases should match lake input from rain or you run the risk of destroying the lake. Our recommendation is to balance input with output by reducing releases to the average annual input that occured in the drought of record in 2008 anytime Lake Thurmond drops 2' below full pool. Using this approach reduced flows last only for a minimum amount of time since the lake refills quickly. Furthermore the river flows that occur at this release rate were demonstrated during the drought of 2008 to be acceptable for downstream stakeholders.
Since this meets the needs of both the people downstream and the ones around the lakes and since it avoids the armageddon effects that occur if you drain the lake below the conservation pool, you'd think a reasonable person would agree to our suggestions. Not so with the Corps and government environmental interests.
The Corps talks about percentage of storage that has to be dedicated to different things as if they can create water out of thin air. If you release all the water percentages no longer count. And if you release more water than nature provides from rain this will eventually occur.
Environmental concerns have been grossly exaggerated by both the Corps and government environmental agencies. For example mention has been made that short nosed sturgeon spawning in the Augusta Shoals MIGHT be impacted by low flows. But sturgeon can not reach the shoals because of the lock and dam. Concern has been expressed about needing sufficient flows to keep dissolved oxygen in limits and to push back against Atlantic tidewaters to protect drinking water against salt intake. In talking with representatives of the Savannah Water Department they state neither salt water intrusion nor dissolved oxygen are a problem now or in the past and logic dictates that the Savannah River is helpless in fighting back Atlantic tides. Environmental interests claim there is too little data to know for sure that this fish or that mussel etc. etc. might be impacted. They fail to consider that artificial river flows averaged out to avoid major fluctuations are far superior to what fish and wildlife had to survive when there was no dam. Still other imaginary concerns voiced by some environmentalists have been lack of high flows affecting sturgeon in the river and the tiger lilly in the shoals. Studies in 2004 indicate that cold water temperatures from high flows drive sturgeon away and recent studies by Augusta University show high flows are destructive to the tiger lilly in the Shoals.
Many demands by environmental groups show a total lack of logic. Claims have been made for much higher flows to benefit waste dilution and/or fish and wildlife. Wanting more water does not make it magically appear. Somehow we've got to get across that you only have so much water based on how much nature provides. If you release more to the ocean than you get from nature you will destroy the whole system and all the fish and wildlife and other environmental concerns along with it. The concern by environmetal groups that we are somehow hoarding the water for use in the lakes is unfounded. We send every drop mother nature provides downstream. We don't keep a single drop.
