Low water levels pose boating hazard

ABINGDON, Va. – Senior Conservation Police Officer Dennis Austin cut the ignition to his patrol boat last week and let it float over a barely submerged rock near Lakeshore Campground on South Holston Lake.
“We’re at 1.8 feet right now,” Austin said, reading a depth finder that electronically measured the distance between the rock and the Triton Enforcer’s hull. The boat’s propeller came within 10 inches of scraping the rock.
Such situations are common when lake levels are low – islands that normally would be under 10-13 feet of water jut up toward the surface.
“You hit that rock at a high rate of speed and it causes an accident,” said Austin, who’s spent 39 summers patrolling the lake with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
Tennessee Valley Authority spokesman Gil Francis said that, despite the recent rains in the South Holston watershed this year, lake levels are still about 10 feet shy of what TVA officials would like. The lake’s surface going into the Memorial Day weekend was 1,718 feet above sea level. It reaches its full-pond depth at 1,729 feet.
Francis said the dry conditions of the past year have caused the ground surrounding South Holston’s shoreline to absorb more water than normal. He said 9.46 inches of runoff has flowed into the lake so far this year, coming in at about 65 percent of normal runoff levels.
Francis said the 17.3 inches of rain that has fallen so far has brought the year’s total precipitation to about 80 percent of its normal levels.
“We need rain,” Francis said, adding that while the lake is recovering from last year’s drought, it still has a way to go. “We need a couple of inches [of rain] a week.”
Lake levels started dropping during last year’s Memorial Day weekend and dwindled into Labor Day with a 21-foot deficit from the full-pond depth.
The low levels forced TVA to cancel its usual fall drawdowns – during which the agency releases water from South Holston Dam to prevent winter flooding.
Now that the water levels are recovering – at least close to normal – Lakeshore Campground owner Tommy Necessary will have to remind his customers to watch for hazards below the surface.
“About every year, someone will forget about [the rocks],” Necessary said, adding that four to six boats ruin a propeller on the rocks each year. “The biggest thing is that they don’t pay any attention.”
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