South Fork Rivanna Reservoir

Latest News

On April 6th Charlottesville City Council approved a Dredging Feasability Study Request for Proposal (RFP) prepared by the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority. Learn more. View the RFP.

Recent Articles
"Who's Really Wasting Rate Payer Money?" (Cville Weekly, March 16)
"Reservoir Task Force Adopts Final Report" (Charlottesville Tomorrow, Jan. 28)

The current discussions regarding the community's 50-year water supply plan have raised many questions about the environmental impacts and overall cost of the current water supply plan. After a lengthy public process, that plan was endorsed in 2006 by city and county elected officials and as required, state and federal permits have been acquired for the plan's primary components. One of those key components, the new Ragged Mountain Dam, is currently being reevaluated due to unanticipated cost increases necessary to address some recently identified geological issues. Estimates to resolve these problems range between [roughly] $20 and $30-million in addition to the original estimate of [roughly] $43-million to construct the new dam.

PEC acknowledges that the circumstances at Ragged Mountain may require some further review of the existing plan, but remains confident that the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA), the Albemarle County Service Authority, and the City of Charlottesville are on the right track with their ongoing analysis of the dam and with the implementation of the adopted plan. PEC is also hopeful that these plans will turn into action over the next year.

Storage at Ragged Mountain Needed to Meet Projected Demand
In recent months, a group of local residents (cvillewater.info) has raised questions about the plan and circulated several alternatives, all of which primarily rely on dredging of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir (SFRR). PEC supports maintaining the health of the SFRR, and understands that at some future time, dredging may well be necessary for both ecological and recreational purposes. However, the current consultant (Gannett Fleming) as well as the consultants that developed the 2001 water supply plan (VHB, Inc.) both concluded that the dredging of the SFRR would not provide enough water to meet the community's long-term projected demand without additional storage at another location. Thus the need for an expanded Ragged Mountain Reservoir. Sediment will continue to enter the SFRR, therefore the cost to dredge the SFRR must account for the initial dredge PLUS the continuous, future dredging necessary to maintain that regained capacity. In contrast, the adopted plan was presented as a least expensive option with the least environmental impact and a plan that will provide the storage capacity for the projected demand.

Our Water Supply Should Not Be Dependant on Speculative Interests
There has also been a lot of confusion and misinformation circulated on the cost estimates to dredge the SFRR. PEC has acknowledged that the current consultant's estimates appear overly conservative. In fact, it was PEC that in 2005 first raised questions about these costs. However, what has not been expressed to the community is that the much lower costs reported in the media and by dredging proponents rely on the assumption that a) the dredged spoils are marketable; and b) this market will provide a profitable, long-term opportunity for a speculative dredging operation. In other words, this low cost dredging would proceed entirely and only in response to a speculative market -- not the community's water supply needs. The reliability of the community's water supply is too important to allow it to be held captive to a speculator's profit expectations.

At this point, PEC has three major issues with the alternatives presented by opponents to the adopted plan.
1) PEC believes that these alternatives could leave the Charlottesville area without enough water to meet projected demand. Even worse, efforts to delay implementation of the adopted plan place the community at risk of water shortages, if in the next several years we experience drought conditions.
2) Many of the expressed concerns and elements of proposed alternatives were reviewed and addressed by the 2001 VHB study and the 2005 GF study (see PEC's review of these elements (pdf)).
3) The cost estimates submitted with these alternative plans fail to cite source information. It is impossible to consider the viability of these proposals without access to reliable and valid documentation. The documents on the left are PEC's attempt to review these proposed alternatives (view PEC's review of cvillewater.info's best, moderate, worst case alternative plan scenerios (pdf)).

PEC Not Opposed to Dredging
What happens next in the South Fork reservoir is a question this community as a whole must address together. PEC has always endorsed such discussion and has urged the City, the County, and the University to pursue a plan which addresses all of the concerns raised about the future of the reservoir. All available information indicates that as a component of the water supply plan, dredging is not cost effective for ratepayers. Therefore, decoupling dredging from the plan would allow more options, not fewer. Dredging consultants Gahagan & Bryant said the community must first decide the purpose for any dredging, then develop a plan to address how that work would be done, and at what cost. Restoring the South Fork reservoir for recreational, aesthetic and ecological purposes might be different -- and cheaper -- than what would be required to dredge and maintain the SFRR as a component of the water supply plan. As a program that would benefit the entire community, the costs could be more fairly allocated than simply added to the monthly bills of ratepayers.

In 2005, the challenge for PEC and other environmental organizations, which came together as a group called Drink Local Water during the development of the current water supply plan, was to find additional water storage within the local watershed rather than tapping into the James River. This community should be proud that the current water supply plan, through input from many organizations and local residents, achieved this goal. PEC now encourages citizens to remain supportive of those trying to turn this plan into action.