What To Do With Moores Creek Dam? Lexington Begins Weighing Options
The results of an engineering study on Moores Creek Dam are in, and Lexington City Council is considering two options proposed by the study as possible solutions to a sinkhole that was discovered at the base of the dam late last year.
The first proposed solution is the installation of a toe berm near the base of the dam to help reduce the seepage that caused the sinkhole, and the second is to decommission the dam and drain the reservoir.
A third option proposed by the engineering study – installing a grout curtain to address the seepage – was dismissed as being too expensive and unlikely to completely address the current seepage issue.
City Council held a work session last week to discuss the engineering study with Mike Claud, an engineer with The Timmons Group who oversaw the study, and to consider both of the options being presented.
Claud told Council that while the toe berm would be able to collect and redistribute the water that was seeping through this part of the dam and would extend the life of the dam, there was no guarantee that it would prevent future seepage into the dam.
“Sometimes, when you put in features of that nature, you will basically collect the water from certain areas, but you could push things to other areas that you don’t recognize problems with currently,” he said. “Like they said [in the report], once you install this berm, it could be a situation where you could find other areas within the dam that may appear, other seepage areas in other locations that could cause additional problems in the future with multiple repairs.”
Installation of the berm is estimated to cost between $2 and $2.5 million, which does not include any estimates of any future issues that may arise if the seepage reoccurs elsewhere within the dam. City Manager Tom Carroll noted in his summary memo that some grants may be available to cover part of the expense of installing the berm – up to $1 million of the total cost – but the majority of the cost would be borne by the city.
During the work session, several members of Council expressed support for decommissioning the dam and draining the reservoir.
“From an actual practical standpoint … the safest thing for us to do would probably be to decommission it,” Council member Nicholas Betts said. “Additionally, I think it’s important to consider that even a toe berm, which is the better of the [other] two options we’ve been presented with, the best case scenario of cost is $2 to $3 million, if it works. But when they do that, they might find other leaks and it might cost an unknown amount of money. And third, even if it works for a time, it could essentially exacerbate the problem and cause more problems down the road or a failure [of the dam] and that’s dangerous and life-threatening to the surrounding community. So for those reasons, I’d be in favor of it.”
“First and foremost, it’s a safety issue, and decommissioning it is the best way to solve it,” added Council member Leslie Straughan.
“It’s had its useful life and is becoming a liability to the city over time,” Council member John Driscoll added. “I think there’s a strong case to build for decommissioning it and returning [the creek] to its natural flow, keeping the water available for the farmers along the way.”
The estimated cost of decommissioning the dam is $2 to $3 million, and Council member David Sigler noted that there might be funding available from the state to help cover that cost, adding that 46 dams had been removed throughout the state since 2021 for ecological reasons.
The approximate timeline for both the decommissioning of the dam and the installation of a toe berm is two years.
The reservoir was originally intended to serve as an emergency water supply for the city and the county, but the 8-inch pipe that runs from the area – and is fed not by the reservoir itself but from a small pond that water from the reservoir drains into – does not currently run all the way to the Endfield storage tank that serves as the reserve for the Maury Service Authority.
Patrick Madigan, director of Lexington’s Department of Public Works, told Council at the work session that the pipe runs about eight or nine of the 12 miles between the dam and the Enfield tank, and that it is unclear how much pipe is currently in the ground over the last several miles, or what shape it might be in.
Though Lexington City Council was generally in favor of decommissioning the dam, there is a question of whether they will be allowed to.
The issue was previously raised in 2009, at which point Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wood ruled that “the County’s rights to withdraw water from the Moore’s Creek Reservoir in an emergency are irrevocable so long as the reservoir is in existence.”
As a result, per a 1986 agreement between Lexington and the county, the city has worked to maintain the dam and the reservoir in the years since, generally spending between $30,000 and $40,000 annually on basic maintenance. In the 2009 ruling, Judge Wood expressly declined to offer an opinion on “what the County’s rights would be in the event that the water become unusable or unobtainable through no fault or voluntary act of the City.”
Carroll told Council that he has already reached out to Rockbridge County Administrator Spencer Suter to inform him of the results of the study and to begin conversations with the county about whether the dam should be decommissioned.
