Normandy Lake reaches normal summer level

For the first time in almost three years, Normandy Lake has reached its summer pool; however, the head of the Duck River Agency is asking TVA to keep the water in the reservoir in case it is needed further down the road. (T-G Photo by Brian Mosely) [Order this photo]

But as of 7 a.m. Tuesday, it's all back.

And Doug Murphy, director of the Duck River Agency, wants to keep it that way.

For the first time in nearly three years, Normandy Lake has reached its summer pool of 875 feet above sea level, but as soon as that level was reached, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) began to release water from the dam. Murphy has requested that the utility hold up on that action.

The dam had previously been releasing 45 cubic feet of water per second (cfs), but a few hours after that elevation was reached on Tuesday, TVA began releasing 660 cfs from the flood gate, but then slowed the flow to 365 cfs late Wednesday.

Murphy said that the reservoir was filled nine days before the guide curve said it should be, and that TVA is trying to "get the reservoir back down to the curve" but Murphy is asking them to "leave it up."

"It had been running high above the curve all spring, and I'm just asking them to please leave it up because we don't have any rain in the forecast for seven to ten days," he said.

With the temperatures forecasted to be in the mid 80s by the weekend, Murphy explained that the evaporation loss alone would take the lake's level down "a good bit" even without releasing water from the dam.

Murphy said his request to TVA was to slow the discharge and let natural evaporation take care of keep the lake level. He said that six inches off of the top of the lake is "a whole lot of water."

"It can make a big difference, that top six inches, when we get to August and September ... if they can keep it up for us, it might make this summer easier," he said.

Murphy said the last time the lake reached its summer pool level was on June 13, 2006.

The level of Normandy has changed drastically since January 2008, when the reservoir was all the way down to 853 feet, 22 feet below summer pool.

Rains over the past two months have brought the level of Normandy up about ten feet from its winter pool of 865 feet and the U.S. Drought Monitor removed Tennessee from the "abnormally dry" classification earlier this month.

One day of heavy rain in late March brought the lake up over two feet in one day, which spurred TVA to release 40 times the amount of water than normal to keep the lake from reaching its summer pool prematurely.

The flow was reduced for several days to allow county officials to safely search for a man who disappeared near the Duck River on March 25.

But just because the lake is back to normal doesn't mean that officials aren't thinking about problems related to future droughts.

Murphy said an inter-agency group is addressing this very topic by developing a drought management plan for the reservoir.

"That will not stop," Murphy said. "We will have a plan that can be implemented without having to go through all the red tape that government has to go through to take action on something like this and we're going to do that while we can breathe right now," he said, referring to the current lull in the dry spell.

Officials learned a lot of things from the drought over the past three years, Murphy said.

"We got our hands bit and we can take actions now to keep that happening in the future," he said. "It just feels good to have water now."

The Duck River Agency will also conduct its quarterly board meeting at Henry Horton State Park tonight at 6:30 p.m.