Senator Lamar Alexander told Corps of Engineers chief Robert Van Antwerp today that the agency needs to pay more attention to the Center Hill Dam.
Alexander says TVA customers will have to spend more on power as long as levels at the lake stay low.
“This has a huge effect on rate payers in Tennessee. If the repairs on Center Hill Dam are not designated as being necessary for dam safety, then Tennesseans will have to fork over 300-million extra in their electric bills to pay for the repairs.”
Both Center Hill and the Wolf Creek Dam were declared a high risk of failure last year, but only the work on Wolf Creek was expedited.
The Corps’s civil design chief in Nashville, Mike Zoccola, says Center Hill poses a lesser risk than Wolf Creek. Water is leaking around the embankments of the lake but not through the foundation of the dam like it is at Wolf Creek.
“We would be losing the lake through that system, but it would not be in quantities quick enough to cause the catastrophic downstream flooding.”
Zoccola says the Corps is taking Center Hill seriously. A contract for preliminary work was awarded last week, but repairs are expected to take six years.
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