Rising price halts plan for dam

By Brandon Shulleeta

Published: September 22, 2008

An engineering firm has nearly doubled the estimated cost of a dam at Ragged Mountain Reservoir, prompting officials to halt design work on a project intended to supply drinking water to the region for the next 50 years.

Gannett Fleming — the firm tasked with the project’s design, engineering and construction — hiked the original $37 million cost estimate to $70 million largely because of fractured and weathered rock at the site of the future dam. Local officials then sought a second study from Schnabel Engineering, which concluded that the project could be done for $56.5 million or less.

Gannett Fleming has been asked to stop work on its plans for the dam, and the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority is bringing in an independent, outside panel to review the findings of both firms.

“The community wants this dam built safely but also wants it built at the most optimum cost,” Thomas Frederick, executive director of the RWSA, said Monday.

The panel will consist of at least three experts in dam design, costs and construction, officials said. However, the amount panel members will be paid or how long it will take them to determine the best route forward has not been determined.

The new cost estimate put a wrinkle in the water supply plan and attracted an aggressive showing from members of Citizens for a Sustainable Water Supply Plan at Monday’s RWSA Board of Directors meeting. The group has long advocated dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.

“I’m asking you all to resign,” group member Betty Mooney said. “We don’t have anyone here representing the rate-payers.”

Mooney said that dredging the reservoir could save “tens of millions of dollars.”

Gannett Fleming “did everything they could to make sure dredging didn’t happen,” Mooney said. “They low-balled the [cost of the] dam and they’ve high-balled dredging.”

However, Charlottesville and Albemarle County officials have maintained that dredging the reservoir alone would not provide enough water to meet the region’s needs for the next 50 years.

“No matter what the foundation of the dam requires, we still know that dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir is not enough to supply the water needs,” said Ridge Schuyler, a member of the task force charged with determining the future of the South Fork reservoir.

The water supply plan, previously estimated to cost $142.8 million, entails construction of a dam at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir to increase water storage from 464 million to 2.19 billion gallons. To fill the reservoir to its new capacity, a pipeline from the South Fork Reservoir is to be built.

Some decision-makers involved with the approved water-supply plan have suggested that Citizens for a Sustainable Water Supply Plan oppose the approved 50-year plan as a way to limit population growth.

“I think there are those who would like to restrict the size of the water supply in our community as a way of restricting growth,” said Schuyler, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Piedmont program. “I think if you want to limit growth you should go into the front door and not through the back door by limiting people’s access to water.”

However, officials haven’t done enough to determine how much dredging would increase water capacity, Mooney said — a claim that Albemarle Board of Supervisors Chairman Kenneth C. Boyd rejected when he was approached by group members Monday.

“We spent two years looking at this 50-year water supply plan,” Boyd said.

Members of Citizens for a Sustainable Water Supply Plan criticized local government for compiling a task force of “amateurs” to examine the future use of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.

“They convened a panel of citizens. What sense does that make?” Mooney said, arguing that the 12-member task force should consist of dredging experts.

“I think we have to figure out what use we want [for the reservoir] before we hire a bunch of experts to tell us how to get there,” Schuyler said.

Officials said that the $70 million estimate from Gannett Fleming came as a surprise. The $37 million estimate pre-dated the geophysical survey. However, Kevin Lynch, a former city councilor, speculated that the increased cost estimate could be a sign that the total price tag of the water supply plan would be significantly more expensive than originally estimated.