Water plan adversaries rally on mall

Opponents of the area’s long-term water supply plan waved signs displaying “no more dam money” on Monday, furthering their criticism of the plan and its included Ragged Mountain Dam project.

“We’ve spent enough,” said Betty Mooney, a member of Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan, the main group raising questions about the plan.
The group and its supporters held a rally on the Downtown Mall on Monday in response to a recent report released about the dam, the centerpiece of the regional plan. The water supply plan calls for a bigger dam at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir to increase water storage capacity from 464 million gallons to 2.19 billion, but cost estimates have fluctuated widely.
The report, released earlier this month, outlined how the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority could reduce costs for a new dam without compromising safety requirements, but it stopped short of releasing a new estimate for the project.
The authority convened an independent review team of three engineers after the estimated cost to replace the Ragged Mountain Dam more than doubled from its original $37 million. The project’s costs initially skyrocketed because an engineering firm discovered fractured bedrock where the new dam’s foundation would be built. Another estimate of the dam project pinned costs at $56.6 million.

“We can’t burn the ratepayers,” Mooney said.
Thomas L. Frederick, the authority’s executive director, said the agency is continuing to pursue information on the costs of the dam as well as the feasibility of dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir. Once they are done, then a decision could be made, he said.
“We don’t have the answers to either of them yet,” Frederick said Monday. “These studies require multiple steps.”
Dredging advocates say that making that the centerpiece of the plan, instead of building the new dam, would cut millions from the plan’s costs.
Dede Smith, a member of Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan, said the consultants’ report contains misleading information and that there is no indication that there is a cheaper way to build the dam.
“
That is not what the report said,” Smith said.
The review panel also recommended that the RWSA plan for the dam project potentially to take until late 2012 or early 2013, but the original plan was to have it complete by 2011 and filled by that fall.
State officials with the Department of Conservation and Recreation, which regulates dam safety, have said that it is likely that the Ragged Mountain Dam would be allowed to continue operating while the authority works to resolve its safety issues.