After weathering verbal squalls at the beginning and end of its meeting tonight, the 12-member South Fork Rivanna Reservoir Stewardship Task Force finally finished its report that details why that reservoir should be dredged.
In the final report, the task force gave only two primary reasons for dredging: maintaining channels for UVA rowing and other recreational use; and preventing wetlands from building up that might cause regulatory problems in the future. The report mentioned that additional storage capacity for the reservoir is a benefit that should be considered a factor, but that “regaining lost storage capacity is not a reason to dredge or slow sedimentation.”
“The overall report has so much good information,” said Holly Edwards, task force member and city councilor, at the conclusion of what has been a six month process. “I think part of what makes me O.K. with it is not just the report, but the process and the journey that we had getting to it.”
What made the process—and tonight’s meeting—especially contentious was the underlying issue of the long-term community water supply plan.
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Now that a report has been issued, local leaders will weigh whether its worth dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.
A group calling themselves Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan (CSWP) has fought the current water supply plan for about a year. The South Fork task force was an outgrowth of plan criticism: CSWP maintained that dredging the reservoir, which is filling in with sediment at a rate of 1 percent a year, should happen before a new dam is built to expand the Ragged Mountain Reservoir.
After debate, local leaders opted to stick with the existing plan, but they did establish a task force, principally to weigh reasons for dredging the South Fork. Mayor Dave Norris and former county supervisors’ chair Ken Boyd made explicit in a clarification of that charge that “this Task Force was not charged with responsibility for reassessing the fundamentals of the water supply plan itself. In our opinion, that is outside of your purview.”
But at the outset of tonight’s meeting, Dede Smith, who represented CSWP on the panel, argued that the report “failed to honor the intent of the governing bodies that authorized the task force” and suggested that the report more firmly recommend comprehensive dredging studies. Wren Olivier, representing the local chapter of the Sierra Club, also objected to the report, and read a statement into the record. Smith and Olivier were the only two to vote against the final report.
The final report will now be scrubbed for typos, and then presented to the four boards that govern local water resources.