More Nice Weather and Dam News

Today was beautiful and warm, I think the weather reports said 62 degrees. It was shirt sleeve weather. I let the ducks out and sent Cooter out since it was sunny and warm. Stacey and I took a Mule ride down to the lower barn to talk to Stevie Garmon while he was stacking tobacco on his trailer. I helped him uncover the tobacco and then Stacey and I pulled to the hay shed. I started the tractor and had Stacey follow me across the road through the creek and to the north end of the hay field. I bush hogged the creek bank while Stacey drove around the field. When I finished we went back to the hay shed and I took off the bush hog. We then went to the lower barn, where Stevie had removed the rest of the tobacco, and I hooked up the back hoe to the tractor. It took about 20 minutes to get the pump on, use the stiff legs to raise the back hoe, and manuever it into position to put the in the pins. I pulled the tractor out of the barn and went to try out the back hoe. It worked so I parked the tractor in the hay shed and rode with Stacey back to the house. Stacey and I had lunch at home today.

When Linda came home from working at the school, I had taken a shower and we went to eat at Grumpy's before going to the high school. The Army Corp of Engineers were having a meeting in the school cafeteria at 6 PM. The place was packed, standing room only, probably over 200 people were there. The Corp had about 8-10 people there to present their plans to the residents of Burkesville and Cumberland County. Lake Cumberland is the largest lake east of the Mississippi River and the 9th largest lake in the USA. They spoke for well over an hour, then let the local school officials present their evacuation plans. Then the meeting was opened for questions from the audience. I figured it would be a raucous affair from then on, but everyone remained calm and questions were asked and answers were given in most cases very politely. Both the presenters and the public were well behaved. It was very informative, but not all plans are completed or formalized. More info will be passed on as it becomes available.
We were given a web url to find information about the project as more info becomes available It is Army Corp of Engineers Nashville District
Stacey, Linda and I left the meeting a little after 8 PM, with over half of the pubic still there asking questions. We had heard enough, when the lady said that water would be 35 feet deep over the Big Renoux bridge on 61 north of Burkesville and it would extend north past the front of our house for about 3 miles.

Some Wolf Creek Dam facts are below...

• Lake Cumberland was filled with water in December 1950, and was constructed primarily for flood control and the production of hydroelectric power at a cost of about $80.4 million. Its shoreline measures 1,085 miles and the lake is spread over 50,250 acres at the top of the power pool.

• Cost to repair leak in dam (discovered in 1967) during late 1970s: $96.4 million

• It ranks 22nd in the One Hundred Largest Dams in the U.S. and required 11,568,900 cubic yards of material in construction. The reservoir ranks 9th in the U.S. in size with a capacity of 6,089,000 acre-feet, enough water to cover the entire Commonwealth of Kentucky to a depth of 3 inches. That's roughly 1.9 trillion gallons.
  

• More than 4.7 million visitors spent 73,252,200 hours in pursuit of recreation and added more than $152,395,044.00 to the local economy in 1999. The number of visitor hours ranks Lake Cumberland 4th in the nation among 383 Corps Lakes.

• Since it was impounded, Wolf Creek Dam has prevented more than $500,000,000 in flood damages for cities and communities downstream.

• The six turbines at Lake Cumberland are capable of producing 270 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply the needs of an average city with a population of 375,000.

• Cost of original dam construction: $81 million
  
  
• Estimated cost to repair the dam in 2006 till 2014 is $300 million.