[Bristol-Birds] Boone Dam's sinkhole a TVA Conundrum
- From: "BBC Net" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "'bristol-birds'" <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:52:23 -0500
TVA Condundrom 21 Jan 2015.jpg
Photo by
Wallace Coffey 21 Jan 2015
TVA
Conundrum*
*A logical postulation that evades resolution, an intricate and difficult
problem.
Somewhere in the future of history, what is written about birding in our
spreadsheets
must surely have an asterisk as a reference mark to indicate omission. It
would
be the lack of ornithological records that now follow some sense of orderly
collection
and archiving.
The future of Boone Dam may alter that.
Scientist, engineers and great minds of management must surely stand
stranded
with the sinkhole problem of the South Fork Holston River rushing beneath
Boone
Dam.
A proverbial "source close to" TVA field workers said today that the
Tennessee
Valley Authority has not found a way to plug or fill the sinkhole which is
causing
a tower of water gushing maybe 50 to 60 feet upwards.
Many trucks and tons of rock have been dumped into the hole and still
nothing
seems to abate whatever threat the flow flaunts.
Experts from Canada and others have scratched their heads and scratched
their efforts.
The source maintains:
1. TVA is exploring the possibility of building a new Boone Dam !
2. The impoundment will likely be drained to little more than
a river for an extended period.
3. Construction may require perhaps two to six years but they
don't actually know.
4. The cost could be staggering.
5. The environmental impact would be serious.
Of course this is such an amazing approach to the problem that no one
yet knows what would be involved. The best minds and tangled bureaucracy
have not had their days at the decision tables.
Little is decided and even less etched in stone. We hardly know if this is
anything more than the fancy imaginations of those who live and work along
the banks of the reservoir or have strange and infested worries about their
futures.
We need to look over our shoulders a bit and take due caution that people
like to think
where there's smoke, there's fire, so we often believe what we hear even it
is wrong.
Words spoken by those closest to the dilemma maintain something like this:
Engineers believe the reservoir level will first be raised to allow those
who own boats and other waterfront property and investments to retrieve
their items. Some boats are probably worth several hundreds of thousands
of dollars. Many smaller crafts are hanging in storage at shoreline boat
hoists. If the solution to the water problem takes years, the depreciation
and weathering might render them of little worth.
The reservoir level will eventually be drawn down to a riverbed
back to
Austin Springs in Washington County and to Bluff City in Sullivan County.
Not that it would be anything new because that happens annually in the
headwaters of winter but annually is not 365 days a year for two to six
years !
How nice it would be to back a big truck up to a "factory made
home" lot on Stone Driver and simply load up a few tow trucks with
several sections of a modular dam and drop them in place at Boone Dam.
Poof! Problem fixed ! Of course that is a dream but the way we
often dream about how to fix big problems with little efforts.
Work on Boone Dam began in August 1950.
` Even in 1955 it cost $20 million to construct the dam and $27
million
to fund the entire Boone Lake project. The CPI cost of inflation would
probably bring home a price tag of more than $60 million for the dam by
today's
standards. Of course that is a calculated guesstimate.
It will take forever to do the feasibility study for what is now
rumored
as building the new dam on the upstream side of the present dam. Is that
even feasible ? Not only is there the exhaustive engineering details of
such
construction but also the geological considerations (that is what has us to
this stage of the solution). The cost estimates. The trip thru Congress
and whoever else in Washington who wants to make our lives better.
No one knows what they might do with the old dam. TVA doesn't
know at this point.
It may have been easier to walk off and leave
the unfinished construction of the Phipps Bend Nuclear site construction
in Hawkins County which was abandoned in the early 1980s after a fair
amount of work had been done on the plant.
Nevertheless, our records of species impact and environmental
costs would be more than significant.
What happens to the Bald Eagle feeding area that supports the
nest near Winged Deer Park when it is gone to river during the nesting
season ? What happens to the diversity of shorebirds, waterfowl and
other migrant and wintering birds which depend on Boone Lake's
shoreline and habitat (Austin Springs) for many important species?
This post doesn't look like it says much about birds and birding
but it really has an avian bottom line.
The fishing resources, boat docks and marina problems not to
mention the details of what happens when the City of Bristol
Tennessee/Virginia
Wastewater outfall line, which extends close to a half mile along the bottom
of the lake near Davis Marina at Beaver Creek on the South Fork River
embayment, is again exposed to the open air and discharges into a
flow that cannot dilute the effluent. That line is so big you can almost
crawl thru it. Same is so for Johnson City's Brush Creek facility on the
Watauga arm. The design of the outfall is different for that plant. I
know little about that.
I know little about much of this.
Some of the folks who live in the area believe they know more
than anyone else. For starters, they believe the sinkhole problem was
exacerbated by the massive dynamite explosions set off in the
construction of the new bridge downstream from the dam as the state
widened TN Rt. 36 leading to the airport. One person said the ground
rolled and dishes and artwork fell off walls in houses and walls were
cracked. They concede that TVA has been struggling with the sinkhole
problem at Boone Dam for years and has had some success with
pouring concrete in it during past years. Who knows?
This post is about making us more aware of what is being
talked about by people living in the Boone Dam area. Some day we will
hear TVA talk about what they really plan to do.
I am confident TVA will tell you now that what is written in this
post is good garbage for a landfill. The question is how does it
fit in a sinkhole ?
But first TVA will have to develop lots of plans.
Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN
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- » [Bristol-Birds] Boone Dam's sinkhole a TVA Conundrum - BBC Net
