Pipeline, higher dam among water supply ideas

Alternatives on how to avoid water shortages due to drought are to be explored at Henry Horton State Park on Thursday when the Duck River Agency Board of Directors convenes for its quarterly meeting.

One of the ideas is to have a pipe to transfer water from Tims Ford Lake, which is fed by the Elk River, to the Duck River below the Normandy Lake dam to maintain river flow through Shelbyville as well as water reserves for the utility serving Tullahoma and Manchester, according to the river agency's executive director and chairman of the board.

"That's one of the suggestions from TVA in 2000," River Agency Executive Director Doug Murphy said Monday when asked about the plan as it was described by board chairman Freddie Stacey of Lewisburg.

Drought severely lowered the level of Normandy Lake last year. To retain supply for drinking water services, the agency persuaded the state to get TVA to release water at a reduced rate. It was a complicated matter since TVA is required to maintain the flow of water through Shelbyville. The required minimum flow through Shelbyville is in order to dilute sewage treatment plant discharge; the city's water treatment plant could actually get by with a lesser amount.

Murphy and the agency's financial director, Jill Garrett of Lewisburg, said the DRA board would meet with officials from the Tennessee Valley Authority at 5 p.m. in Meeting Rooms A and B at the state park lodge in Chapel Hill. Directors and visitors will break for dinner at the park's restaurant at about 6 p.m. and thereafter the board will hold its quarterly business meeting.

The TVA officials are to report on their findings since DRA officials met with them on April 9 in TVA offices at Chattanooga, Murphy and Stacey said. The issue is broadly defined as increasing the water storage capacity of Normandy Lake.

One way to do that would be to increase the height of the dam so the level of the lake would be higher and more water would be stored for the utilities that rely on Normandy Lake as their supply reservoir, Stacey and Murphy said.

Raising the level of the lake, however, would affect other structures and properties, Stacey said. It could require raising bridges to accommodate the higher level of the lake; those projects, he said, could cost nearly as much as the dam work.

TVA has broad estimates on the cost of the several ideas to be discussed Thursday, Stacey said. River agency directors might be considering hiring engineers for more specific cost figures.

Meanwhile, there has been extensive discussion about the creation of an authority to have regional control over water policies throughout the Duck River watershed, or at least the area served by the Duck River Agency, which has representatives from Marshall, Bedford, Coffee, Maury and Hickman counties.

Bedford County's representatives on the DRA board include Circuit Court Clerk Thomas Smith and Wartrace Mayor Don Gallagher.

On Monday, Murphy and Garrett went to a state legislative hearing conducted by the Joint House and Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee.

That panel conducted a sunset hearing for the river agency as required by state law. All state agencies are called to testify to their related legislative committee to justify their continued existence. While continuation is generally routine, some agencies have been discontinued, or "sunsetted," as described by lawmakers. One such example was the Fayetteville-based Tennessee Elk River Development Agency that had been developing and selling residential lots on property TVA acquired when it impounded land for Tims Ford Lake in Franklin, Moore and Coffee counties.

Joint committees on the topic of an agency hear justifications from agency and department leaders and make a recommendation to the House and Senate which vote on whether the agency should be sunsetted or not.

"We sure hope it's another sunrise," Garrett said Monday. "Our last one was four years ago."

Sunset hearings are conducted on all state departments, agencies, boards and commissions on a four-year cycle.