19910326 Ver 1_Staff Comments_19940803

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'VA, Note for John Dorney
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From: Boyd DeVane on Wed, Aug 3, 1994 4:25 PM
Subject: Lake Gaston Update
To: Beth McGee; David Harding; Don Safrit; Jim Overton; John
Dorney; Juan Mangles; Ken Eagleson; Monica Swihart; Ruth Swanek;
Steve Bevington
Cc: Greg Thorpe; Steve Tedder
Alan Hirsh called today to relate a few thoughts about Lake
Gaston. He asked me to relate them to you.
. He told me that I should modify Monica's letter of July 25th
to Melba McGee to add some additional thoughts. Since I was
out, I have several things to add and Alan said it would be easy
to just resubmit her letter with those additions.
. He said that some of you may want to make additional comments
and he encouraged you to add anything you might have thought
about since the time of your earlier submission. I plan to get
the letter to Alan tues noon, so let me know this week if you'd
like to add anything else. I would need your additional comments
by Monday 2:00 PM.
. Alan Hirsch has learned some additional information on the
mitigation flows proposed by Vir. Beach and how misleading they
are. It has only recently been discovered what it really meant
and may want to modify your comments accordingly. The
mitiagtion plan was based solely on the striped bass and solely
on the 51? day window of low flow protection. What the
mitigation agreement requires is that when flows are above
certain targets , and the withdrawal would cause it to drop
below that target, then the flow will be augumented by upstream
releases. If however, the flow would have been below this
target without the withdrawal, then no mitigation would be
required. Therefore, it is true when Va.BEach says that the
flow will drop below those targets the same number of days.
However, the "natural" low flow conditions will be allowed to
drop significalntly below what they would have been at the very
lowests of times. They do still provide for an absolute minimum
release from the Roanoke Rapids Reservoir dam (1000 cfs most of
the time). We need to comment that the proposed mitigative
flow figures will not "gurantee 100 percent mitigation of any
loss from the 51-day (or 76-day) "spawning window" as the Corps'
documnents indicate and would not "virtually eliminate the
possibility of any adverse effects of even minimal significance
which this project cou cause during the critical like stange of
the striped bass" as also stated in the Corps documents.
If you think any of your previous comments could be improved by
including reference to this information, please let me know as
soon as possible. I will be modifying Monica's letter anyway
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and I'll be glad to add anything else you can think of.
Also, I will be giving some of you some information from the
public hearing transcripts. Some of it is what Va Beach said
and we want to look it over to see if we see flaws in it. The
other is comments you made at the hearing and questions that
were asked of you. If you have responses or information they
requested, you can respond at this time.
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