Just before dinner last Sunday, Joni House was startled when she noticed a mud-caked woman sloshing through her side yard near the Chattahoochee River.
The woman told House she had been kayaking when she suddenly hit rapids near Bull Sluice Lake, a small body of water backing up to Morgan Falls Dam in Sandy Springs. The lake was draining ahead of her, the woman said, and she was barely able to pull out before being sucked toward the dam.
“She managed to get over to the cove in back of my house,” House said.
Down a 36-mile stretch of the Chattahoochee, from Buford Dam in Gwinnett County south to Morgan Falls, hundreds of businesses and boaters noticed a sharp decline in stream flow Sunday. Those near Morgan Falls Dam saw Bull Sluice Lake nearly dry.
Because of faulty scheduling by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the sudden drainage could have damaged more than a weekend outing. It posed a threat to the Atlanta and Cobb County water systems, and to wildlife.
“We’re still assessing whether there was an impact to aquatic life, to fish, to invertebrates,” said Patty Wissinger, superintendent of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. “Certainly there was an impact to recreational users.”
Between Roswell and Sandy Springs, rowing clubs canceled practices and boaters stayed on shore or went elsewhere. Some people tried to tube the river but found themselves walking through many of the sections, she said.
“One family had to be assisted after they lost control of their boat in the draft created by unusual stream channeling near the dam,” Wissinger said. “Thankfully, there were no injuries reported anywhere in the park.”
The Corps bases its releases from Buford Dam on downstream requests to meet flow standards for the Chattahoochee River at its confluence with Peachtree Creek 12 miles downstream of Morgan Falls Dam. It’s here where Cobb County and Atlanta have intake pipes to supply their water systems and where both release treated waste water a little farther downstream.
The state requires a stream flow of 750 cubic feet per second to dilute the treated waste water properly. Georgia Power, which operates Morgan Falls Dam, must release enough water to keep the flow at or above that level.
But records from the U.S. Geological Survey show Georgia Power began to run short on water to send downstream Sunday. Bull Sluice Lake, which averages about 27 feet in depth, dropped nine feet, and flow rates in the Chattahoochee south of the dam show levels below 750 cubic feet per second for 12 hours.
“We kind of messed up by underestimating what was necessary for Sunday,” Corps spokesman Pat Robbins said. “Once we knew there was a problem, we did our best to get it fixed.”
Georgia Power spokesman Mark Williams said Morgan Falls operators noticed the problem early Sunday, but they were unable to reach the Corps until early evening. It takes 12 hours for water to travel from Buford Dam to Morgan Falls Dam.
Robbins said the Corps had given Georgia Power the wrong phone number to the control center at Carters Lake where many of its water releases are controlled. He said a system is in place now to provide all personnel with backup phone numbers and contact information.
There is no flow gauge at Peachtree Creek, but the meter at Vinings, 2.4 miles north, showed levels well below 750 cubic feet per second from 2 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday. It was below 600 from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Linda MacGregor, watershed branch chief for the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, said that despite the low river levels, oxygen levels at Peachtree Creek were above the allowed threshold throughout the period, and there was no evidence of environmental impact.
Pat Stevens, environmental planning director for the Atlanta Regional Commission, said there were reports Cobb and Atlanta both had increased sediment in their river intakes, but it never threatened their water systems.
“It wasn’t good to pull Morgan Falls down that far, and we’d like to see that sort of thing never happen again,” she said. “It had the potential to be a big problem, and a lot of the things that could’ve happened didn’t happen.”
Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, a non-profit organization devoted to protecting the river, said it was alarmed.
“Human and mechanical failures are inevitable, but the system is being managed with such a small margin of safety that it puts the river, people and wildlife at risk,” Executive Director Sally Bethea said
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