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Kentucky River is the best water solution

January 03, 2008|William F. Grier

For nearly 20 years, central Kentucky community leaders, water professionals, and many private citizens have known that we are faced with a water supply shortage. During this period, we have gone through several droughts that have been more of an inconvenience than back-breaking events.

This may be Mother Nature's wake up call that she will bring a really bad one to our doorstep at any time. Her warning needs to be heeded without further delay. Ask your Atlanta friends about this.

During much of this 20-year period, central Kentucky has debated between a Kentucky River solution and a Louisville Water Company pipeline solution to this problem. In the late 1990s the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council was firmly behind the Kentucky River solution rather than the LWC pipeline. Unfortunately nothing has been done since that time to carry out this solution.

Since the late 1990s, much has changed regarding the Kentucky River solution. The Kentucky River solution endorsed by the LFUC Council was to raise Locks 9 through 14 by four feet for a few million dollars. Experience since that time has shown that it is not simple to raise a lock nor can it be done for a few million dollars. Lock 9 is currently under stabilization, at its present elevation, for $15 million. This cost can be projected to the other locks. We are now back to square one.

The present Kentucky River solution is to build a supplemental water plant on Pool 3, below Frankfort. The LWC pipeline solution is essentially the same as it was in the late 1990s. The present Kentucky River solution has the advantage of a larger drainage area than the upper pools and is below Lake Herrington Reservoir. Herrington contains more available water than all the other Kentucky River pools combined, and this water can be made available for downstream use by the governor in the event of emergency conditions. Flow data from last summer show that Pool 3 has adequate water for a supplemental plant under frequent drought conditions.

The LWC pipeline solution has several attractive features. However, it has an eliminating qualification: time.

The LWC has downplayed or ignored the time required for contract negotiations, PSC approval, engineering, financial/ownership arrangements, right-of-way/easements from the federal, state and local governments, and private property, Corps of Engineers permits, Division of Water permits, and lesser items. At present, none of these have been accomplished and have to be in place prior to beginning construction, which would take additional time.

How long these items would take is not known, but it is a matter of years rather than months. We do not know when Mother Nature will draw our number, but to delay a solution by additional years is not sound judgment.

The Kentucky River Solution is bid and ready to go. Project completion is expected in about two and a half years. Completion of the LWC Pipeline Solution would be many years after that. This is time we no longer have to squander.

The long-term cost of the LWC pipeline solution and the Kentucky River solution is very nearly the same. The cost of one solution appears to be more or less than the other depending upon which assumptions are used to project costs 20-30 years hence. Since cost projections 20-30 years in the future are at best a guess, cost should be a minor factor in the decision that has to be made.

There is no perfect solution to this problem. With either solution, a pipeline will be in somebody's backyard, it will just be different backyards.

Backyards notwithstanding, this problem must be solved with all expedition.

The Kentucky River solution best fits this need.

William F. Grier, PE, is a board member of the Kentucky River Authority and an ex-officio member of the Bluegrass Water Supply Commission. An engineer, he has been involved in many ways in studying solutions to the Bluegrass region's water supply problem.

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