Falls Lake still shrinking

Day by day, Falls Lake shrinks within its red clay banks.

Its level was 246.8 feet above mean sea level on Monday. Without substantial rains, the water level could drop to 238 feet by the end of the year, 13.5 feet below its normal level of 251.5.

During a meeting about the drought Monday night, Terry M. Brown, a hydraulic engineer who oversees flows from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dams across the state, said an important indicator was the amount of inflow, water entering the lake.

Beginning in May, those inflows have been negative, meaning more water is leaving the lake than entering. "That's of great concern to me," Brown said.

"The inflows we're seeing now you typically don't see until September, October, November," Brown said. "That's the reason for the governor going into a conservation mode." Gov. Mike Easley has called on municipalities and counties across the state to begin water conservation measures.

Almost every stream in the Neuse River basin was registering less than 10 percent of its normal flow or was at a new record low, Brown said. Those stream gauges were established about 1930, he said, indicating conditions worse than during a 1933-34 drought.

The area has a cumulative rainfall deficit of 21 inches since June of 1998, Brown said. "That's when it started showing up." That deficit is half a year's worth of rain, usually 45 inches.

Brown said recent forecasts from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, show some optimism for an increase in rainfall through the rest of the year.

"In the past, most droughts ended with a flood event in February or March. I hope we don't have to wait that long," Brown said. "We're (the Corps) projecting a negative until September and projecting some tropical conditions coming in to help us a little."

"I'd like to have a tropical event coming up through Alabama."

Falls Lake water is budgeted in three accounts: water supply for Raleigh, water quality for downstream flow and a sedimentation basin at the bottom.

Right now, Brown said, there is 59 percent left in the water supply budget, "and what we're projecting is it will be down to about 18 percent remaining at the end of the year."

The water quality budget is in worse shape. It has 51 percent remaining with only 3 percent left at the end of the year in the Corps' projections.

"When it hits 40 percent remaining, that's serious stuff," Brown said.

Brown's office holds weekly telephone conference calls with all the interested parties, the stakeholders, for Falls and the other area lakes. It is up to cities like Raleigh, Brown said, to enact more stringent water conservation measures as the drought worsens. "We keep them apprised and they have to take the action."

Brown said he is reducing the outflow from the area dams, trying to balance the need for water supply, for fish habitat, for a reasonable flow downstream to dilute effluent from the 400-plus wastewater dischargers and for industrial operations. "If the flow is too low, the fish die, the industries have to send employees home and cities have to ask the National Guard to truck in water."

Brown said the Corps has one ace in the hole for Falls. They could draw down the Beaverdam impoundment portion of the lake. One of the state park rangers remembered what happened the last time Beaverdam was drawn down: "Thousands of pounds of dead fish."

If the Corps decides it must drain all or part of Beaverdam, that is when the Friends of Falls Lake will go to court to stop it, Frank Eagles said after the presentation.

Eagles, a Rolesville commissioner, was one of the founding members of Friends of Falls Lake, the organization that hosted Monday night's meeting at Bay Leaf Baptist Church. About 30 people attended, some of them park rangers and Wildlife Resources officers.