I read recently that the Bear Creek Reservoir was now being used for water withdrawal and had to chuckle in a sad sort of way as I thought about my past involvement with this small body of water.
When I and a small group of neighbors founded Friends of Douglas County (FoDC) in 1997, few people know that we started as "Friends of Bear Creek”. We fought several pending development / disasters to the reservoir, the major one being the Bear Creek Golf Course and Subdivision (No reflection on the good folks living there now). This subdivision was a environmental catastrophe for two reasons - 1) the manner in which the development was environmentally mismanaged, and, 2) The lack of sedimentation and erosion (S&E) control enforcement by the county. These issues led the FoDC to request that the Soil and Water District revoke Douglas County's permitting ability. The Soil and Water commission did not revoke the county's permit but did cite numerous violations on the Bear Creek development. Do you remember these issues in 1997-99?
The Bear Creek Reservoir (BCR) was taken off-line by the Douglasville - Douglas County Water and Sewer Authority (DDCWSA) because it was too heavily silted-in. The silt made water withdrawal too expensive in maintaining the pumps and filters. This siltation directly relates to the preceding paragraph about upstream (lack of) enforcement of S&E codes. I was also repeatedly told that WATER WOULD NEVER BE NEEDED FROM THE RESERVOIR, that there would be more than adequate water in the Dog River Reservoir (DRR).
Common knowledge at that time and borne out to present conditions is that Bear Creek sustains a higher flow than Dog River during drought conditions. In normal rainfall conditions, Dog River flow is much greater than Bear Creek. Because of this, the FoDC asked the DDCWSA if it were not feasible to pipe water to the Dog River Reservoir since it had a much larger pool capacity. We were again told that would be impractical and unfeasible to ever use the BCR again because of its small size and silt. By the way, $1.4 million was spent on the DRR dredging silt out of it several years ago! I do not know how much water capacity the Bear Creek Reservoir presently has since that is directly impacted by the very considerable amount of silt filling the pool. I do know that there is a new shoreline with vegetation growing where there used to be good water. This reservoir is not very large (35 acres - if I remember correctly) but it could be used as a collector to keep the DRR filling. The DRR is about 200 acres.To more effectively use the BCR, I believe it would need to be dredged to create a greater capacity than it possesses now, in normal times probably not financially sound. HOWEVER, these are not normal times and the likelihood of repeat draughts is pretty good. We should consider "digging out" the BCR and raising the dam to create a bigger basin. While this "bucket" is not near as the DRR bucket, it has a better flow in these conditions. The DRR has a planned dam raising project. This project will increase the capacity from 1.2 billion gallons to 2 billion gallons, but as we can see, we could pump water from the BCR to help fill the DRR pool. To my knowledge, the BCR still has a state permitted withdrawal rate of 6.4 million gallons per day, while the DRR has a permit for 23mgd. I remind the reader that I am going mostly on recollection in terms of the numbers I mention here, but I do believe this idea of resurrecting the Bear Creek Reservoir has merit and needs to be studied in the context of planning for drought emergencies in the future.
The drought may be a blessing in disguise for several reasons:
1) It may make experts hesitant to write-off ANY precious water resources such as the Little Bear Creek, Bear Creek and its reservoir. We are now going back to using a reservoir after hearing repeatedly that it would never be needed again.
2) It makes the population projection of 218,000 by 2030 (ARC data) look pretty absurd when we can’t supply 120,000 people now without restrictions. We should plan for some population growth as a metro county but we must do so prudently with a goal of NOT reaching the ARC’s number.
3) It will demand future development infrastructure include gray water collection and re-use so that our finite potable water supply will go farther. Mike Mulcare
3rd District – Douglas County Commission
Mike, thank you for writing this article. Owning property here but not living here,in the mid to late 90's, I did not know this, and this history is very helpful. There are multiple ways to improve our water supply here, that are being overlooked. And Bear Creek, and where growth began in Douglasville is one of them. How do businesses avoid getting permits where storm water is concerned?Doesn't the state of Georgia have to approve to meet federal guidelines?
ReplyDelete