22 September 2007

Here is the draft archive for documents about what happened between an accidental alliance, here called the Lower Goulding Alliance (LGA), of three parties independently concerned about the ecological impact of the drying of lower Goulding Creek and the Lake Oglethorpe Association (LOA) which has for 35 years controlled the water entering Lake Oglethorpe, the major source for Lower Goulding Creek.

The Table is a temporal listing, as far as practical, of some of those documents that I think are relevant and are already in the public domain or not yet written. They should be mounted within a few days. Please send others. There are others floating around that are clearly drafts of later public documents or not intended by their authors for public distribution. Please do not send these. And if you think something here should be removed, or be highly edited or annotated, I will consider doing so.

In summary, there were some misunderstandings. Some intemperate comments were made in private and in public. These were probably the result of the time constraint under which we were working, the attempts by correspondents to convey the diversity of opinion of their colleagues while trying to present facts and arguments, and a task that was novel to the participants. But I think that the process worked well enough. A decision was made in good time and the atmosphere is still clear enough to see the possibility of a future agreement.

I have reworked the following commentary several times but it still has problems in fairness and facts. The comments here and on other Subject Pages are mine, perhaps mine alone. Being fair is very important, but does not override what I think are otherwise productive observations or opinions. Links to the referenced documents will eventually be added.

Before the Board Meeting
03 October 2007

Lake Oglethorpe interrupts Goulding Creek, holding about 670 acre-feet of water at Normal Pool height. As an immediate consequence of the years-long drought, several downstream residents independently believed there was an emergency, and came to believe that Lake Oglethorpe could at least delay its otherwise inevitable end point if the drought continued. Below the dam, Goulding Creek was then essentially a series of isolated, small, shrinking, shallow puddles. Many had trapped small fish. It appeared that none of the tributaries that normally contribute water to Big Creek, Moss Creek, or Goulding Creek had any flowing water because there was no flow just below the point where Goulding Creek joins Moss Creek (the merge retaining the name Moss Creek) or, at the Wolfskin Road Bridge, just below the point where Moss Creek joins Big Creek (the merge retaining the name Big Creek). There are several small impoundments in the upper portions of both Big and Moss Creeks, but not even together do they impound anywhere close to the amount of water in the Normal Pool of Lake Oglethorpe.

It was unclear then and now to what extent the many years of impounding at Lake Oglethorpe during the drought has affected the present lack of flow below the dam. It is impossible to rerun the experiment without the lake being there. However, it was obvious that a small fraction of the vast quantity of water in the lake could possibly rescue the ecology of Goulding Creek. Said in the most positive way, the lake was now a potential resource unavailable to the upper portions of the three creeks but available to downstream Goulding Creek should those who control the outflow of the lake choose to contribute the water.

Over about two days, individual conclusions and possible solutions solidified as they learned of each other's concerns. Literally a few hours before the meeting, they learned that Lee Taxton had already contacted the Board of Directors of LOA and that the Board was holding an emergency meeting to respond to his concern. Lee requested any support at that meeting that the other downstream residents might provide. Description of the meeting continues below under the header 'The Board Meeting through LOA Vote'.

A few days before the Board meeting there was an unprecedented event that could not help but have a major impact on the deliberations of the Board and those of the Association members. Brown Widener related the probable timeline at the beginning of the Board meeting, and I am only providing my poor recollection of his narrative. If someone wishes to submit a more complete and accurate narrative, I will gladly put it in the first row of the Table above. It is already reserved under my name but I think someone of the Association should write it.

Someone partially opened the valve on the 18-inch outflow pipe that penetrates the standpipe about five or six feet below the level of the always-open, primary spillway near the top of the standpipe. The purpose of this outflow pipe is to allow a regulated lowering of the lake level to any level from that of the primary spillway to the level of the outflow pipe. That five or six feet of water comprises about one third of the total volume of the Normal Pool. The tampering was discovered not by noticing a lowering of the pool level, which by most accounts was somewhere between three and eight inches, but by the noise of the escaping water.

This act was widely viewed as criminal trespass and vandalism, although it was acknowledged that no damage was done to the mechanism, nor was there any good idea of how much water had been released before the valve was closed by the Association. The understandable focus of attention was on the act's deliberate insult to the community. They were under seige and then a party with suspected responsibility trys to gain an audience for purposes surely not benign. Perhaps they will demand the lake's surrender.

I do not condone opening the valve. Furthermore, it clearly complicated what was an honest, simple, and very modest request for action to be taken by the Associaton. But that direct negative impact should probably be ignored as relatively unimportant as the discussion continued; it was the (apparent lack of) results downstream of the unauthorized outflow that had the most impact on the discussion with the LOA Board. Several experts already contacted by Brown, and after the meeting by Rick Lafleur, predicted that a release would have no effect.

As related below, the proposal by the concerned downstream residents was eventually agreed to be Thaxton's written proposal to the Board. Simply, that proposal was for [up to] a three foot release, with a hold at one foot to determine if the one-foot draw had any visible result downstream. I had not thought of it in such a fashion, but more than one Board member suggested that our proposed one-foot experiment had already been done through the illegal opening of the valve to the 18-inch exit pipe, which we all reported to be without an apparent effect downstream. We could honestly quibble, and we did, that we knew neither the length of the experiment nor its outflow rate, only at best a total volume, and we did not have a monitoring program in place before, during or after the so-called experiment. The major uncertainty was and continues to be the conductivity and saturability of the stream substrate. What volume of water, in what range of flow rate, is required to hydrate the substrate, to establish conductive pathways, if any, beyond the stream substrate and what is the rate and capacity of these conductive pathways. Essentially, does the substrate behave like a mile-deep and mile-wide layer of sand or like a concrete raceway? Probably not like a concrete raceway, if the so-called experiment had any merit.

There was a possible positive result of the tampering, although it certainly does not justify it. I thnk it likely that it productively focussed the minds of the Board and perhaps of the membership.

The Board Meeting through LOA Vote
22 September 2007

Several downstream residents believed there was an emergency. Over two days they learned of each other's concerns and literally a few hours before the meeting, that Lee Taxton had already contacted the Board of Directors of LOA and that the Board was holding an emergency called meeting to respond to Taxton's concern. The Board graciously hosted those who showed up in support of Taxton request.

Thaxton asked the Board to take immediate action by releasing a total of one foot of lake water over the course of one to possibly three weeks. Additional release might then be requested up to a total of three feet, depending on the results of the emergency experiment. The nascent LGA had no other agenda, and indeed did not know of any other possible issues that may now be coming to light. The Board meeting was at times tense but the Board members and guests managed to collectively craft a specific, limited proposal very similar to the one that Lee Taxton earlier conveyed to Board President Brown Widener and had brought in formal form to the meeting. That is, it was clear what was the goal of the request, what action the Board was asked to do, and if the action was approved, the criteria for judging the results of that action.

The Board decided that the entire membership had to vote on the request. It accepted the emergency nature of the request, and within a very few days had distributed a ballot while additional opinion was obtained, organized, and then distributed to both parties. In fact, in obtaining other opinions, Brown Widener spent several days immediately before the Board meeting and Rick Lafleur spent several days after the meeting in what I know was very frustrating work. They and the Board were honest brokers though many had grave doubts about the merits or motivations of the request and possibly some had concerns about to what ends the request might lead. Events moved very rapidly until the announcement of a vote against the proposal so overwhelmingly negative as to possibly impeach the results.

I have to conclude that the process of voting was flawed, probably as a result of the time issue and perhaps a culture of the Association. The LOA Board can easily correct that conclusion by submitting documents to me for inclusion in the Table above. But the LGA was not invited to participate in the preparation of the Ballot or the wording of our proposal which we only presume was part of the Ballot materials. The LGA has not seen the Ballot or any information that may have been sent before, with, or immediately after its distribution. Only after distribution of the LaFleur document was there a suggestion that some input from the LGA might be allowed, but that was then well into the one week voting window.

It probably should have been done differently, but a timely decision was in fact made about the LGA request, for which the LOA Board is owed sincere thanks by all concerned.

Immediately after the Vote
22 September 2007

Left outstanding, water management issues will probably be settled in an unsatisfactory way by some agency some day acting on laws passed by our august State Legislature. None of us want that. This archive is offered in the belief that knowing what has happened is a necessary part of developing a water management plan satisfactory to the members of the Lake community and to the downstream community. The Goulding Creek Watershed Weblog is probably more appropriate for opinions about past process and behavior. I welcome suggestions, either to be mounted here or posted independently to the Weblog, about how to reach an agreement we can all live with, especially using lessons learned here already. I especially want such an agreement to be reached on its own merits and not inhibited or aided by some real or imagined issues that are not the one in front of us.

But that is just my opinion. Alternative avenues are now being pursued by others in their belief that the vote of the LOA membership confirms what they view as a 35 year history of deliberate ignorance of the responsibilities of their community by members of the LOA. I think that is a matter of debate which I hope could be illuminated on some other Subject Page.

03 October 2007

Rick Lafleur has noted that the letter announcing the result of the vote was explicit about the attitude of the LOA and its Board after the vote. At least the larger issue about how to manage the lake is not closed. Great to hear it as well.

Many were upset by the headline of the Lee Shearer piece in the ABH, which was not written by Lee, but were ok with the contents of the article, which of course he did write. I must admit I looked up the verb 'hoard' in the dictionary that I took to college to see what all the fuss was about, it not having in my usuage so large a negative meaning. I recommend doing it. My reference implied that there has to be an eventual use of what was being collected for the method of its collection to be accurately described by the word. Presumably there are some stronger words, not offered by my reference, if there is no use or if that use is not recognized by the writer. Perhaps the headline is more generous than it appears.

This site and its related Weblog have been up three weeks in form of bits and pieces. They have a modest level of traffic appropriate for their age and subject. The most visited page is this one, apparently for its documents rather than for my narrative.

Glenn Galau