Water Levels Keep Falling At South Holston Lake

BRISTOL, Tenn. – About 40 slips at Painter Creek Marina stood empty and useless Monday – separated from the tantalizing water of South Holston Lake by several feet of dry land.

While some boaters busily prepared for a day of relaxation in the warm, August sunshine, dock owners Jon “Dee Dee” and Sabrina Brown worried about the future of the popular Sullivan County dock – in the wake of a second-straight year of low lake levels.

“Financially, they’re killing us,” Sabrina Brown said of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates the lake. “And it’s not just us. We get a lot of business from these campgrounds around here and people don’t want to come out because the lake is low. So people aren’t spending money at Wal-Mart, they’re not going out to eat, they’re not going to movies at Exit 7. They’re not spending money in the Tri-Cities.”

South Holston measured 1,701.9 feet above sea level Monday, or about 27 feet below TVA’s prescribed summer target level. It also is about 4 feet below the level in mid-August of last year, when the region was in the grips of a record drought.

This summer, South Holston stood at 1,717.1 feet above sea level on June 16 and 1,709.5 on July 15.

The marina’s business is off by almost 20 percent since the beginning of 2007, when drought conditions began to grip the region, Brown said. The couple attributes most of that downturn to water levels rather than the tight economy.

“It hurts lake travel. With low water levels, people are afraid to take their boat out for fear of hurting it,” Dee Dee Brown said, adding that many customers have damaged their boats in the last year.

His wife said she’s had a number of conversations with TVA officials and asked them to help businesses along the lake – which spans both Virginia and Tennessee – by holding onto more water.

“Last year, we had a severe drought – no rainfall at all for months. I understand that. This year, we’ve had some rain and it’s [lake] dropped more than it did last year,” Sabrina Brown said.

TVA officials, who visited the region on Monday, said there is little they can do until the area receives sustained, significant rainfall.

“This the third year of the drought,” said David Bowling, TVA’s manager of river scheduling and the river forecast center.

“Since February of 2007, we have operated at minimum flows from South Holston,” Bowling said. “We’ve taken only enough water to meet our downstream commitments. We’re keeping as much in reserve as possible.”

Last week, the Bristol Herald Courier asked for information about specific volumes of water moved through South Holston Dam this summer and how that compares to pre-drought conditions in 2006. But during their Monday news conference, TVA officials only provided averages.

The minimum flow average is about 1,000 cubic feet per second daily, Bowling said, adding that the amount is similar to flows when the lake’s level was higher. Water is entering the lake at about one-tenth that rate.

“We’re doing the minimum power generation. In a typical year, you do more than the minimum. That is the least we can do and meet our downstream obligations. It’s one thing to do the minimums for a few months at a time. We’re coming into the third year of doing minimums,” Bowling said.

Systemwide, TVA’s hydroelectric production is at 60 percent of average, Bowling said. Asked about South Holston, Bowling said he didn’t have specific information but called it “well below that average.”

Because the region had a rainfall deficit to begin the year, the parched earth and vegetation has soaked up much of the rain that has fallen, Bowling said.

Area drought conditions are currently listed as severe, according to News Channel 11 Chief Meteorologist Mark Reynolds.

“We’re about 5.09 inches below normal rainfall. Last year, we were about 22 inches below normal, so we’re still about 2 feet below normal,” Reynolds said.

That is an average, Reynolds added, because some parts have received more rainfall, while some Tennessee counties have gotten much less.

While water levels of all of the system’s 10 tributary storage reservoirs are currently below average, South Holston easily sports the greatest deficit.

“The average for all 10 is 14 feet below target levels,” Bowling said. “South Holston is the most.”

Watauga Lake is 14.4 feet below the guide, Cherokee is 15.1 feet below, while Douglas is 16.7, Fontana is 20.8 and Norris is at 15.9, Bowling said.

Nearby Boone Lake – which TVA doesn’t use to provide water downstream – is at its current operating guide of about 1,382 feet above sea level.

That disparity has generated a lot of calls to TVA headquarters in Knoxville, Bowling said.

“Boone was very, very slow to fill this year, but we took no water to fill Boone. There was a great deal of anxiety about how long it did take Boone to fill,” Bowling said. “We received repeated requests to pull water out of South Holston and Watauga to fill Boone. But we responded we don’t do that and we didn’t do that.”
Water continues to be moved through Boone and Fort Patrick Henry reservoirs and fed downstream, Bowling said.

Water from South Holston and nine other reservoirs is used to feed the TVA’s river system for generating electricity, drinking water, preserving aquatic life, transportation and other needs, Bowling said.

TVA has gotten a number of calls from residents along reservoirs in Northeast Tennessee and other areas – many voicing the same concerns as those along South Holston, Bowling said.

“South Holston is the first reservoir in the system, so there is no upstream resource,” Bowling said. “There is no way to get water into there.”

When TVA revised its operating policy in 2004, it included holding South Holston’s water levels longer and increased winter elevations, Bowling said.

“We tried to look at it where we could hold more water in the project [South Holston] to support recreation,” Bowling said.

South Holston levels aren’t expected to diminish after Labor Day, while Boone will be drawn down.

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