News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Preliminary estimates to raise the dam at Crossville’s Meadow Park Lake some 18 feet could be in the neighborhood of $50 million to $100 million.
Consultant Kevin Young said Tuesday night at a City Council work session that is based on wetland and stream mitigation requirements both at the state and federal levels. Young said the next step would be mitigation work to make up for the wetland and streams impacted. Young said Crossville would then be responsible for recreating the habitat.
Young said they were surprised that the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation required almost double the mitigation of the Army Corps of Engineers.
“We’ve come up with six ideas that we want to explore to try to reduce this mitigation requirement that the Department of Environment and Conservation has said that they initially want,” Young said. “To something that is closer to the smaller number that the Army Corps of Engineers said they are okay with.”
Young said a geotechnical investigation needs to be done, and the scope of the mitigation work will come out of an engineer’s report. Young said this water project would be one of the largest habitat projects to occur in Tennessee over the last several decades.
Young said the city will also need to continue on with efforts to get the necessary permits to raise the dam. He said that process will take several months.
“One of the next steps will be the need to procure the firm to do that work and that will be a big job,” Young said. “It was something I know in the past when we did an inventory we went through a proposal process with firms and we’d think you’d want to do that again and we’d assist with that.”
Young said his firm will be responsible for the design and construction of the design which is a very specialized process. Young said 360 acres of extra water storage would be created as a result.
Young said they are going to look at whether it is cheaper and smarter for the city to raise the current dam, or to build a new one.
