George,

The plan presented by Dave Norris at the Saturday breakfast deserves very serious consideration. He has essentially kept the 50-year community water supply plan adopted in 2006 but modified it by recognizing and incorporating major new data that has been discovered since 2006. The major new data is 1) the consultant grossly mislead decision-makers about the cost of dredging the South Fork Reservoir, 2) the very poor condition of the Ragged Mountain dam and 3) the need for a much higher and extremely expensive dam (which assumes that Ragged Mountain will be the only reservoir).

Major points of the Norris plan are:

• Increase conservation and efficiency with respect to water usage.
• Reduce the storage needed at Ragged Mountain by dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, if it can be shown to be done in a cost effective way with a feasible disposal site for the sediment.
• Reduce the storage needed at Ragged Mountain by enlarging the diameter of the new pipeline connecting the reservoirs which will allow Ragged Mountain to be filled more quickly by water taken from the South Fork reservoir.
• Repair and enlarge the existing dam at Ragged Mountain by raising the pool elevation only by 13 feet instead of the 45 feet proposed.

One of the features of the Norris plan is to increase conservation practices. Actually, that is also a feature of the unmodified original plan. Conservation of water will take place because the cost of the original plan will be so high (especially with a high dam) that water bills will have to increase sharply. Norris depends on changes in behavior to implement conservation; the original plan depends on sticker shock.

Some say that we cannot count on the public changing water usage behavior. Yet during the drought a few years ago, behavior changed virtually overnight. Many of the those behaviors could be reinstituted and/or encouraged if community leaders wanted it to happen. For example, restaurants serving water only to those who asked for it, installing water-saving bathroom fixtures, limited lawn watering, shorter showers, etc. (I believe most car wash places have continued to
reuse their water.) A number of years ago, recycling was introduced
and many thought it would not work. It has now become a habit for most.

If we are allowed by the original decision-makers to thoroughly study the possibility of dredging the South Fork to expand storage capacity, we might discover it is not that expensive and that, with proper mufflers and sound deadening equipment, it could be quiet.

This is a plan for the next 50 years. Why not take the time now to make sure we have it right and don’t burden future generations with a needlessly expensive project.

David (Electronic mail, February 20, 2009)