APCo dam report includes suggestions for environmental concerns

New suggestions for how Appalachian Power Co. should address environmental issues at Smith Mountain and Leesville Lake are part of a lengthy environmental impact statement released last month.

The document, issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is the last piece of APCo’s efforts to obtain a new operating license for the hydroelectric project.

The report makes suggestions for how APCo should handle such issues as monitoring erosion around the lake and downstream, increasing and improving recreational access around the lake and increasing water-quality monitoring efforts.

FERC’s final report includes some modifications to APCo’s proposal, but none significant enough that the company will challenge them, said Frank Simms, manager of hydro operations for AEP.

“We thought that the FERC took all comments into consideration and basically did a pretty good job putting it together,” Simms said. “Based on the final environmental impact statement, we don’t see much in the way of comments from us.”

The Smith Mountain project’s FERC operating license will expire March 31, 2010. The company has spent several years working on the documentation needed for the new permit, which will be valid for 50 years. Among the issues that have been addressed were striking a balance to keep lake levels high while maintaining adequate flow downstream in the Staunton River.

“The environmental impact statement is a guideline and is usually stuck to by the full FERC commission in coming up with the license agreement,” said John Sheppelwich, APCo spokesman. “But there could be changes even we don’t know about.”

One of the key issues addressed in the environmental report was monitoring erosion around the lake, which Simms said is caused by boat wakes and wind, and erosion downstream from the Leesville Lake dam caused by pulsed releases.

“Although commenters have expressed concern that water level fluctuations from pumped-storage operations cause erosion, the energy applied to the lakeshore by these fluctuations is negligible and contributes little to the on-going erosion,” the report said of Smith Mountain Lake.

However, the report said, measures to reduce erosion from boat traffic could include establishing no-wake zones and banning large boats from traveling near vulnerable shoreline areas.

And while the number of boats on the lake doesn’t affect wave size, it does affect the amount of time the shore is exposed to those waves, the report said. “Restrictions on overall boat traffic on the lake may help to reduce shoreline erosion.”

The report recommends that APCo add monitoring locations along the shorelines of Leesville and Smith Mountain lakes and require erosion monitoring along the Staunton River from Leesville dam to Altavista for more than one year.

Another major issue is improving recreational access to the river. Among the recommendations: installing permanent toilets at all public recreation sites that are the responsibility of APCo, studying whether additional recreation sites are needed in addition to the three sites proposed by APCo and surveying recreational use on weekend days.

Other recommendations include: developing a plan to monitor water quality in both lakes, notifying adjacent landowners when herbicides are used on aquatic vegetation and identifying which chemical is used and developing procedures for monitoring and controlling debris during summer months at public swimming beaches and recreation areas.

“The next step we’re waiting on now is to see how the final license looks,” Simms said. “It should be issued so that the new license goes into effect April 1 of next year. They can issue it a week before that or they could issue it a week from now.”