BEST NUMBER ON LAKE LEVEL IF 3600 HAD BEEN USED THROUGHOUT THIS DROUGHT

I calculated where the lake would be if we had gone to 3600cfs immediately when Lakes Thurmond and Hartwell dropped 2ft.  My number came out to be 3 ft below full pool instead of 12ft .  I asked for verification of this number by the Corps and they came up with a figure of 9ft.  Both these, 3 ft or 9ft are far better than the 12 ft experienced but it was bothersome that we did not agree better.  After further discussion and tweaking the numbers we both can agree that the lakes would be at least 5 to 6 ft higher than they are now had the drought plan recommended to Ed Kertis when he was the Colonel over this basin been adopted. So far as further fine tuning to eliminate the discrepancy between us and the corps the difference is not big enough to warrant that.  Perhaps in the future we can consult with one of the firms who do modeling for Duke Power or the state of Georgia to get an objective and unbiased result that everyone can agree to.

Meanwhile there is a misconception between those concerned about downstream and us.  The common thinking of downstream interests is that we just want full lakes regardless of the cost.  If that were the case we would simply recommend that the lakes be kept full all the time which would mean the river would return to the flows it used to experience before the dams were built. What we are really trying to achieve is balance.  The Corps claims they are balancing the lakes but they are not.  The only way you can achieve balance is to match inflows from mother nature with releases to the river.  Otherwise either the folks downstream or the folks above the dams are not receiving their fair share of the water.  We are suggesting this be done on a yearly average basis so as to avoid unreasonably low river flows or flooding.  And again we are not asking for any flows outside those experienced and found to not be harmful over large periods of time.