Nearly all of the water that flows to the taps and shower heads University students and Charlottesville residents use comes from the South Fork Reservoir.
South Fork, however, has been shrinking since it was dug in the 1960s because of sedimentation. The South Fork Reservoir task force, which is in charge of maintaining the water source, recently completed a report summarizing the options for the reservoir’s future.
The task force considered the reservoir’s future with the assumption that plans for a new dam near the Ragged Mountain area will go forward. For this reason, the committee mainly focused on what to do with a reservoir that would soon be unneeded, said Dede Smith, a representative for Citizens for a Sustainable Water Supply.
For decades, the reservoir has served nearly all of the University and Charlottesville area, as well as parts of Albemarle County. The population has been steadily growing in all of these areas, creating a greater demand for water. Meanwhile, large storms, logging and development around the lake have increased erosion, which, in turn, has limited the available space for water, as discussed during one of the task force’s meetings.
Mark Fletcher, a task force member who represents the University, said Albemarle County experienced a drought in 2002, and although water did not run out, it certainly could have. He noted that a reservoir with shrinking storage space is in greater danger of going dry with each passing summer, which, in turn, could severely impact the University’s water supply.
As “an attractive recreational area,” Fletcher said, South Fork has uses other than water storage. Kayaking, fishing and picnicking are all allowed at the lake, and both the Virginia women’s varsity and men’s club rowing teams row at the reservoir. As a result of sedimentation, though, the reservoir has severely decreased in size, Fletcher said. Thus, a new water supply may be necessary.
At this point, however, the new Ragged Mountain area dam is not a sure bet, Smith said, because the projected cost has increased a surprising amount since its inception, and taxpayers have raised concerns that it would be too costly to build.
Tom Olivier, conservation chair of the Piedmont chapter of the Sierra Club, said constructing the dam is not an environmentally sustainable project.
Ragged Mountain “is a biologically-rich area,” he said. “A chunk of it would be destroyed for this project.”
The most viable fix to the reservoir that could address both recreational and water supply concerns, the task force suggested, involves dredging, a method of removing excess mud from the bottom and sides of a lake, leaving a larger space for water to collect in the basin. Despite its seeming simplicity, most members of the task force, including Fletcher, had to acknowledge the downsides of dredging. Because sedimentation will continue to occur, dredging is only a temporary fix and must be repeated every few decades to be effective.
This process can also be expensive; Fletcher said it might cost as much as $30 million to dredge the entire lake.
Fletcher also noted that the new dam in the Ragged Mountain area would be a long-term solution to providing water for a growing population, and the new area and construction would make the upkeep of a new dam less of a concern.
Smith said, however, he believes the South Fork Reservior task force was operating under potentially false assumptions. Smith noted that the new Ragged Mountain dam might not be built and also, if it were built, the new dam might not be economically or environmentally superior to South Fork.
“I felt the task force was restricted to only looking at the recreational benefits and not the more important issues of water storage,” Smith said. “Selective dredging is a way of improving recreational benefits without meaningfully improving water storage capacity.”
Regardless of the final decision, both Smith and Fletcher stressed the importance of finding an environmentally and economically viable solution soon.
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