$3.8 Million GRDA Visitor’s Center OK’D
By RANDY KREHBIEL
A related water-quality lab has drawn the attention of OU researchers.
VINITA — Grand River Dam Authority directors on Wednesday gave the go-ahead for a $3.8 million visitor center and water- quality lab that has drawn the interest of University of Oklahoma researchers who are investigating heavy metal pollution in Ottawa County.
“It looks like it will be a pretty significant facility,” GRDA Ecosystems Management Director Darrell Townsend said during Wednesday’s board meeting at the GRDA’s headquarters. “We’re still putting things together.”
Located adjacent to the Pensacola Dam, the 16,300-square-foot Grand River Ecosystems and Education Center will include exhibits pertaining to the area’s history and development; a meeting room capable of seating as many as 140; and offices for the GRDA’s ecosystems management and permitting divisions, the Grand Lake Chamber of Commerce and an associated organization, South Grand Lake Visitors Center Inc.
The Grand Lake Chamber of Commerce will pay about $3,600 per year in rent and, with South Grand Lake Visitors Center Inc., contribute about $300,000 to the facility’s construction, officials said.
Holly Moore, the GRDA’s director of community relations, said the project has been on the drawing board for about seven years.
The GRDA, which manages Grand Lake and Lake Hudson, offers tours of the Pensacola Dam but otherwise has no visitor center or historic exhibits.
Officials said the water-quality lab will allow the GRDA to monitor heavy metals and microbial pollution and help solve the dissolved oxygen deficiency that has troubled the agency’s dams for years.
Townsend said OU is interested in becoming a partner in the lab because of work the university is doing at the Tar Creek Superfund site.
Also Wednesday:
GRDA officials said a thorough search turned up a transaction from 1943 by which the agency sold a 0.14-acre site to the Cherokee Yacht Club for $10.
The transaction reduced by about one-third an encroachment identified late last year.
The club is now owned by GRDA Chairman Terry Frost.
A lease covering the encroachment was approved in December, but the board had to put off amending it until at least April because only four of seven directors were present. Five were needed to take action on the matter.
Frost was among those absent.
A final 2008 budget pro jecting net revenues of $25.3 million on total operating revenues of $308.6 million was presented.
Projected revenues were essentially unchanged from last year but did not include $28 million in one-time payments received in 2007.
Operating expenses were projected at $192.3 million, an increase of nearly $30 million, primarily because of a big jump in projected fuel costs.
Interest expense also is expected to increase because of the GRDA’s pending purchase of a 36 percent interest in the Red Bud generating plant in Luther.
Randy Krehbiel 581-8365
randy.krehbiel@tulsaworld.com
Originally published by RANDY KREHBIEL World Staff Writer.
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