Rivanna reservoir task force presents long-awaited report
After five months of work, a task force designed to map the future of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir finished its report, Monday. The report was approved by an 11-2 vote.
The report advises Charlottesville and Albemarle County officials to “investigate the cost of selective dredging when purposes, priorities and specifically identified areas have been established.”
Meeting short-term water supply needs while the area’s long-term plan is implemented, increasing capacity for rowing and providing educational opportunities for nature studies were identified as benefits of selective dredging.
The report also raised questions about whether failing to dredge would mean that dredging would become impossible in the future because of the risk of wetlands forming. The report recommended the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority further investigate the matter.
“I think that having this dialogue about the future of the South Fork Reservoir was healthy for the community,” said Ridge Schuyler, former director of the Nature Conservancy’s Piedmont Program. “The remarkable thing is the level of consensus that we were able to reach.”
The task force made final revisions at its last meeting on Monday, though most of them were minor. However, Wren Olivier of the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club and Dede Smith of Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan asked that the draft recommend a comprehensive, professional dredging study.
Smith wrote an e-mail to the other members three hours before Monday’s meeting that said: “clear intent to limit — even prevent — dredging, flies in the face of the public outcry to preserve this valuable asset.”
Olivier asked that a statement from the Sierra Club recommending a study of the cost and feasibility of dredging the reservoir be attached to the final report. The motion was voted down, though Olivier was asked to read the statement, so that it could be included in the meeting minutes.
The second paragraph of the 25-page report says that the task force was not charged with revisiting the community’s 50-year water supply plan. Instead, the task force was charged with describing “other benefits, beyond water storage,” the report says.
The area’s long-term water-supply plan calls for piping water from the South Fork Reservoir to the Ragged Mountain Reservoir after a higher dam has been built at Ragged Mountain.
The cost of the project was initially estimated at $142.8 million. However, an engineering firm more than doubled the cost estimate of building a new dam at Ragged Mountain, because fractured bedrock was found at the site where the dam’s base would be built. Critics estimate that the final costs of the water supply plan could exceed $200 million.
Some officials say that creation of the South Fork Rivanna Stewardship Task Force had little or nothing to do with the water supply plan, because dredging isn’t necessary to supplement the water supply plan and dredging alone wouldn’t create enough water capacity.
Some critics, however, say that the task force should have been given more flexibility to recommend officials study full-scale dredging of the reservoir, to possibly become the centerpiece of a new water supply plan.
The 13-member task force, which was charged with finalizing a report to Charlottesville and Albe-marle officials by December, met 13 times since August.
Advertisement
Reader Reactions
*
The following task force members voted in favor of the recommendation for dredging below: Holly Edwards(City Council), Wren Olivier( Sierra Club), Dede Smith(Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan). The remaining Task Force members voted to not allow it to be included in the final report. Citizens for A Sustainable Water Plan and the Sierra Club voted against the final report. A minority report will be issued
The recommendation that was voted down:
Proceed with a Comprehensive Professional Study of Dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir
1. Get a baseline evaluation of the reservoir condition with defining physical and geophysical information.
a. Bathymetric measurements to determine capacity
b. Side scan of reservoir bed to determine conditions (obstacles)
c. Geotechnical samples to determine composition of sediment
2. Identify potential dewatering and disposal sites
3. Identify potential commercial uses for sediment
4. Work with the community and the Army Corps of Engineers to establish an integrated resource management plan for the reservoir
a. Analysis of new sandbar/wetlands and potential for removal
b. Assess the impact of dredging on the control of hydrilla
c. Prevention of future sedimentation: i.e. forebays and other sediment entrapment methods
5. Cost estimates for a menu of dredging options
6. Evaluate Permitting conditions
Funding
RWSA has identified $300,000 in the Watershed Management Fund that can be used to fund a dredging study
PRESS RELEASE
From the Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan January 26, 2009
The Rivanna Reservoir Task Force report is a carefully constructed but thinly disguised attempt to prevent the public and our governing officials from learning that the true cost of dredging the Reservoir to near its original capacity would be far less, possibly $100 million less, than the original estimates on which decisions were made. Since those decisions, estimates by dredging professionals have suggested that dredging the Reservoir is likely the least expensive, the fastest, and the least environmentally destructive method of significantly expanding our water supply storage capacity.
We are in total agreement with the statement made by the Sierra Club and overwhelmingly supported at the public hearing and in the surveys that the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir should first and foremost be maintained for water supply and not primarily as a cultural asset.
Water supply planning decisions should be based on facts. The recommended technical surveys of the Reservoir should be implemented without further delay, as has been recommended by resolutions of both our City Council and Board of Supervisors.
Advertisement