As Drought Empties Georgia Lake, Officials Plan to Cart Away Exposed Sediment
By Jeremy Redmon, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dec. 6–Georgia’s devastating drought could have a slight silver lining for Lake Allatoona.
The lake’s retreating waters have exposed more than 50 years of sediment, creating a huge clean-up opportunity. That sediment contains contaminants such as phosphorus, a nutrient that feeds algae. In turn, algae makes it more difficult and expensive to clean the water for drinking.
So state officials are in preliminary talks with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dig out potentially millions of cubic yards of this sediment and cart it away — before the lake levels rise and cover it all up again. And that could restore some of the reservoir’s original capacity to hold more water for the next drought.
“The good Lord gave us lemons with the drought, and we are going to try to make lemonade,” said Ron Papaleoni, general manager of the Lake Allatoona Preservation Authority, a state agency.
But a lot of things need to happen before this project could get under way.
First, Papaleoni needs to submit a plan and an environmental assessment to get approval from the Army Corps, which owns the reservoir. That plan must show how much debris would be removed and where it would be stored, said Tim Rainey, operations project manager for the corps.
Papaleoni said he is considering several places where sediment could be removed, including where the Etowah River meets the lake. The debris could be moved to some abandoned mines, Papaleoni said, though he declined to identify those locations.
Second, Papaleoni’s authority needs about $200,000 to do the environmental assessment. Papaleoni said he has asked Cobb County’s delegation to the General Assembly for the money.
State Sen. John Wiles (R-Kennesaw) said he is seeking that money, hoping he can get it from a local government or from the state through an emergency appropriation. The excavation project can’t wait, he said, until the state budget is approved months into next year.
“We need some money,” said Wiles, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “We just have to find it. I am working hard on finding it now as opposed to later.”
And third, if the project is approved, it could cost in the tens of millions of dollars, said Papaleoni, whose authority’s budget is about $180,000.
Removing 100,000 cubic yards of soil from the shores, for example, would cost $1 million and would increase capacity to provide only six additional hours of water service to the area, according to the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority. That authority serves about 800,000 people in Cobb, Cherokee, Douglas, Fulton and Paulding counties.
But removing the sediment and phosphorus from the reservoir could make it cheaper for the utility to clean the water for drinking. Because of the increased algae in the lake, the utility was forced to spend roughly $500,000 extra on chemicals to clean the water this year, said Glenn Page, general manager of the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority.
Papaleoni also is studying the area where the Little River connects with the lake, near the Little River Marina off Bells Ferry Road. Tons of sediment has piled up on the lake bed there. Combined with the drought, the sediment is sharply affecting marina business.
Rick Spokes, the marina’s operations manager, took a visitor on a tour of the property recently. From the marina’s mostly empty docks, he walked several hundred yards on dry land to the center of the lake bed, pointing out curving furrows in the dirt where stubborn boaters had dragged their propellers before realizing they made a mistake and turned back.
“This is definitely the worst,” said Spokes, who has worked at the marina for 12 years. “It’s just like a desert.”
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