The Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority, as requested by the state Legislature, created the report to inventory Georgia’s current and proposed reservoirs and determine what changes or additions could create the most immediate impact on the water supply.

Raising dams of existing reservoirs is much cheaper and faster than building new reservoirs, although the report noted that conservation, efficiency and connections between water systems should come first.

The report identified 16 reservoirs that could be expanded by raising a dam without flooding homes or businesses. Among them are the Macon’s Water Authority’s Javors Lucas Reservoir, a small flood control reservoir on Tobesofkee Creek in Monroe County, and the Edie Creek Reservoir owned by the city of Barnesville.

Local officials responsible for each reservoir were not consulted, and in most cases they knew nothing about the report until its recent release. The report found that some of the expansion projects would require pumping water more than 10 miles from a river to the reservoir, making those feasible but more expensive, said Kevin Kelly, senior water supply program manager for the facilities authority.

The report suggests that the Tobesofkee Creek reservoir could be enlarged to hold more than 38 times its current capacity, bringing its final volume to almost 10 billion gallons. The little reservoir is sometimes called Little Lake Tobesofkee, Monroe County Commission Chairman Harold Carlisle said.

The lake, built in 1963 to control flooding, is privately owned, said Carmen Westerfield, a district conservationist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Camp Kaleo, primarily a summer camp site owned by the Georgia Baptist Convention, is located on its banks.

The old Soil Conservation Service built the lake and many others across Middle Georgia counties to control flooding. Westerfield said the Tobesofkee Creek reservoir was successful in preventing heavy flood damage during Tropical Storm Alberto in 1994. Today, Monroe County and the soil and water conservation district maintain the dam, she said.

If the lake were expanded as much as the facilities authority report suggests is feasible, it would also use the Ocmulgee River as a secondary water source. However, the river is more than 10 miles away from the lake, and pumping that distance would be more expensive than pumping water to some of the other 16 lakes in the report, the document states.

Expanding Little Lake Tobesofkee so much would make it larger than “big” Lake Tobesofkee in Bibb County, which relies on the same creek as its water source.

“We would be concerned that it might impact us, especially with drought conditions,” said Doug Furney, Lake Tobesofkee’s director. He added that Lake Tobesofkee had problems with a dropping water level in 1999 when more water was being held upstream in the creek for the city of Forsyth’s drinking water supply.

Carlisle said Monroe County officials have never discussed expanding the Tobesofkee Creek reservoir as a water source, although the county is in the middle of making tough decisions about how to meet its future water needs.

“We’ll need more in the next 25 years, there’s no doubt about it,” Carlisle said.

The Monroe County Commission has been deciding whether to buy and rehabilitate a water treatment plant on the Ocmulgee River, drill and interconnect more groundwater wells, or renew contracts for purchasing water from the Macon Water Authority — or some combination of options.

LUCAS RESERVOIR WOULD BE HUGE

The Macon Water Authority’s Javors Lucas Reservoir now supplies some Monroe and Jones county residents as well as Bibb County customers. The report overestimates the current volume of that lake, so it could hold almost twice as much water if it were expanded as the report suggests. At a final volume of almost 12 billion gallons, it would be the largest of any of the 16 lakes on the report’s list.

Tony Rojas, the Macon Water Authority’s director, said the lake stores more than enough water to meet demand for a long time.

“But the good thing about this study is: When we need to expand, we can, and we can almost double our capacity,” he said.

He added that the authority could further excavate the lake within its current footprint to increase capacity without even raising the dam. But if the dam were eventually raised, it could be done without affecting any structures but the pump station, and the authority owns all the land that would be flooded, Rojas said.

That’s not the case for the city of Barnesville, which would have to flood privately owned land to expand Edie Creek Reservoir from 400 million gallons to 2.9 billion gallons. Expanding Edie Creek would likely require water from the Towaliga River, the report states.

But such a project seems unlikely because the current reservoir, which was expanded after the 1994 flood, is expected to provide all the town’s water needs for at least 20 years, City Manager Kenneth Roberts said.

Several of the other reservoirs the facilities authority identified as ripe for expansion are in nearby counties such as Spalding, Pike, Butts and Henry, but Roberts said he thinks these counties aren’t particularly thirsty for more water, either.

In fact, the report did not consider whether the 16 reservoirs were actually in the portions of the state that need additional water.

Some of the other expansion projects outlined in the report would withdraw water from rivers that flow through Middle Georgia, indirectly affecting local towns.

Four of the reservoirs with expansion potential would rely on the Flint River as a water source, according to the report: Cane Creek Reservoir in Meriwether County, Heads Creek Reservoir in Spalding County, Rush Creek Reservoir in Talbot County, and Still Branch Reservoir in Pike County. Kelly said engineers did not assess whether the river could support all three of these projects.

Paul DeLoach, board president for the new Flint Riverkeeper organization, said the state has already issued permits for removing too much water from the river basin. “The reservoir demands will contribute to the demise of the Flint, its ecosystems, and economic development downstream,” he said.

Longbranch Reservoir in Henry County also made the list. The report identified the same spot on the Towaliga River as a potential water source withdrawal for both this reservoir and Edie Creek, if either were expanded. Kelly said the river would support only one of the two projects.

The Oconee River, which is the water source for Milledgeville and Dublin, would also be the water source for an expanded Sandy Creek Reservoir in Clarke County as envisioned in the report.

Consultants for the facilities authority who compiled the report spent two months combining information from a handful of previous studies, explained Chris Clark, the agency’s executive director. There may be other viable reservoir expansion possibilities that aren’t listed because engineers couldn’t find enough readily available information about the projects, he said.

The report has been provided to legislators, and a hearing will probably be held about it in January.

“I do expect the General Assembly will want us to take this to the next level,” he said.

But Clark emphasized that regional water planning councils, which are supposed to start meeting next year, will be the ones deciding whether to pursue the reservoir expansions and how to fund them.

To contact writer S. Heather Duncan, call 744-4225.

Lee Young, vice president for the company’s materials division who also is a Cochran native, said although a handful of other American companies make asphalt from shingles, only Dykes uses 100 percent recycled materials. The local use of the product has put Bleckley and Dodge counties on the cutting edge.

“We discuss this on a national level and use Bleckley and Dodge as case studies,” said Young, explaining that Dykes gives seminars and lectures at events held by the U.S. Green Build Council and the National Asphalt Paving Association. “You’ll have an engineer from California trying to develop an environmentally advanced asphalt product, and he’ll be looking at the details of a road in Cochran, Georgia,” Young said.

But the best news for rural counties with small budgets is that the cost is a third to a half the cost of traditional hot mix asphalt, said leaders in Bleckley and Dodge counties. Last week, Laurens County also paved its first road with the product, Young said.

“The citizens have been very pleased with it,” said Kelly Bowen, Dodge County manager. “As long as we see this material is going to hold up, which to all appearances it is, we will (switch) to this and we’ll be able to do more paving than in the past.” It costs Dodge half as much as traditional paving, Bowen said.

Dykes’ RTF material is a “cold mix” asphalt, meaning it doesn’t have to be heated. It doesn’t require the use of specialized equipment, allowing counties to use their own employees to pave dirt roads instead of hiring contractors at greater expense.

Bleckley and Dodge have each paved about three miles of roads with the product, starting a year and a half ago.

Bowen said, “There’s so much less involved with this than with traditional paving” through the Georgia Department of Transportation, which requires acquiring 80 feet of right-of-way. Bleckley County found that RTR roads cost a third less to install, County Commissioner Mike Polsky said. The county’s 2009 budget calls for twice as much paving. About 20 percent of county roads are unpaved, he said.

Polsky said the pavement is less susceptible to potholes than traditional asphalt and beats the former clay roads.

“We don’t have to pull buses out of ditches out there any more,” he said.

Bleckley plans to use it for resurfacing, too.

Dykes has been making its RTR asphalt for five years, but it became more marketable recently as oil and liquid asphalt prices shot up, Young said.

That price advantage drops when it must be delivered long distances. For that reason, Dykes sold it only in the Atlanta area until it purchased a sand pit in Macon off Sgoda Road two years ago, Young said. When trucks began driving to Macon to haul sand back, it started to make financial sense for them to drive south loaded with asphalt instead of empty, he said. Midstate counties send their trucks to pick up the product from Macon.

The crushed asphalt in the mix comes from broken-up Atlanta parking lots and roads that are being replaced, Young said. RTR is receiving growing interest in the Atlanta area because of the recycled content of the product, Young said.

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That is awesome reuse of materials. I wonder if ground up tires would extend the mix? Maybe find a way to incorporate plastic bottles that according to the TV will last forever in a landfill, why not find a way to pave roads with them.