At its regular meeting yesterday, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority board voted to adopt a schedule for remedying dam safety issues at Ragged Mountain Reservoir. Though the schedule, which calls for restoring dam safety by February 2013, is premised on how long it would take to enact the current water supply plan (i.e., to build a new Ragged Mountain Dam and a pipeline from the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir), RWSA Executive Director Tom Frederick is careful to say that the schedule does not itself mandate a specific course of action.
"The schedule does permit the flexibility to make future decisions that are deemed appropriate by the entire community with respect to how to remedy the safety issues," Frederick says. Opponents of the new dam have called for dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir as an alternative, and a study of that idea is currently underway.
The two existing dams at Ragged Mountain, both more than 100 years old, are operating right now under conditional permits from the Department of Conservation and Recreation. DCR has extended permission for the dams to continue operating until the end of May.
