At a meeting today of the four boards that have sway over the local water supply, they all agreed to look into the legal implications of altering the height at the proposed Ragged Mountain Dam, with the fate of the beleaguered 50-year water supply plan hanging in the balance. They also agreed to some preliminary steps that would help determine whether to dredge the South Fork Reservoir.
The current water supply plan proposes a dam 45-feet taller than the existing dam. But cost estimates of that dam have escalated and critics of the plan, and now city Mayor Dave Norris, contend that a new dam doesn’t need to be built.
The problem is that the dam project required permits from several agencies, including the state Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. If the plan is changed, it might require starting all over again in the permitting process for a water supply plan—which has some local officials worried that regulators would force the community to go to the James River for its new water supply. Hence the legal review.
The four boards—Charlottesville City Council; Albemarle County Board of Supervisors; the Albemarle County Service Authority; and the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority—officially met this afternoon to discuss the recommendations of a task force report on maintaining the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, which has been filling in with sediment since it was built in the 1960s. The task force examined the problems facing the reservoir and weighed the reasons for potentially dredging it.
Read more in next week’s C-VILLE.
