Cumberland/Wolf River Dam - repairs

[Dave Stewart]

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Nov-08-05 AT 07:08PM (EST)[/font][p]I was down at Cumberland in early October with a group of which I am a part of that has been going there trout fishing every year for 18 years now. Among some of the other activities we have there we have a fish fry every year. This year at the fish fry dinner we had a guest speaker that happens to be the man that is in charge of Wolf Creek Dam.

He spoke to us about the dam repairs and what it would involve. He basically told us that although the dam is in no danger at this time, their sensors show that the water is undermining an area of the earthen dam and that they were going to take the action now to fix it before it becomes a big problem. He said that they would be putting concrete barrier into the ground below the line where the water is eating away at the dam's foundation. He also addressed the water levels of the lake and how they would be impacted.

He told us that the lake would be held down to winter pool levels until Memorial Day in order to accomplish the mission. The man also told us that he was glad for a chance to talk to us since many in our group are locals and regulars there at the lake and river and he wanted us to put out the facts as he told us. He said the rumors are running rampant about lake levels and just how bad the problem with the dam really is....so basically if we take him for his word...and there is no reason not to since he is THE MAN....you can expect the lake levels to be down to winter pool until Memorial Day.

[Chubminnow]

I'd also like to know how this effects Dale Hollow...

[Dave Stewart]

Common sense tells me that since Dale Hollow is not fed by the Cumberland River it should have no effect whatsoever on Dale Hollow Lake.

[buzzking]

by holding cumberland low in the spring, they must dump all the water it would normally store into the river, well when that gets down to where the dale drops in, they will have to hold dale extra high to compensate for the excessive flow already in the c-land river

[Dave Stewart]

Haven't read or heard anything on that possibility although I could see in an extremely wet spring it might possibly need to be done....wondering you have read anything on this or is this just your thoughts? Anyway, one thing is for sure...water flows downstream and at the end of the line of lakes on the Cumberland is Barkley and that is close to home...lol. Be interesting to see how the extra flow of water during the spring will effect us down here on this end.

[buzzking]

Dave, I havent read this anywhere but this is my opinion, this type of stuff is what I am majoring in. The whole c-land river and all the surrounding areas is depending on c-land to hold a certain amount of stage storage in the spring, if it doenst then every lake on the chain will be affected somewhat, I would say the change by the time it gets to barkley will be non-existent, unless we have a wetter than normal spring, but with the weather pattern of the last 5 years we are in line for another dry one in 07

[Dave Stewart]

I figured as much...not really expecting a big change down here unless we have some big floods this spring up river but I do expect we will see a little more current than normal....that just may signal an early Crappie bite in bays on Barkley if current is above normal and prolonged. Guess we will find out come spring and for the next 5 or 6 of them...lol.

[jigman73]

The article that I read in the somerset paper said kinda the same thing that most are saying. Repairs are to start in 07 and if everything goes as planned then the work will be completed in 14, but that depends on everything going as planned and no delays, but lets be real, this is the government we are talking about. Water levels were to be below or next to winter pool and never to exceed summer pool. There is suppose to be an agreement with the KDFW that says that they will start letting the water come up when it gets around the spawn (water temp somewhere around mid 50's if I remember right). All this is due to the fact that they didn't fix the problem before in the 70's just patched it, so now they are having to go back and try to fix it. Again I say remember that we are talking about the government.
God Bless and have fun.
Lee

[Chubminnow]

Since we're on the subject of Cumberland/Wolf Creek **** I figured I ask the question here instead of starting a new thread...

Does anyone know if they're letting out a bunch of water last weekend/this week/this weekend? Have they already pulled the lake down to winter pool or are they still pulling?

[riverman]

They're not pulling it down at all right now. I was on the river twice last week. You can see the five day forecast here: http://www.orn.usace.army.mil/hh/products/memrvrbna.txt

These are really low numbers and if you look at the graph of the lake level here: http://www.orn.usace.army.mil/hh/resplots/wol_a.html You'll see that it's at the lowest level that they want. To explain, there's two curves they try to follow. A top and a bottom SEPA curve. I really don't know what SEPA stands for but I DO know that they try to keep the lake level between the two.

Hope this helps!

[Chubminnow]

WLCK2 3.2/ 3.2/ 3.2/ 2.6/ 2.6:WOLF CREEK DAM

The numbers I've listed above came directly from the link you gave me...I have no idea what they represent...can you give me some insight?

[etcfishin]

I'll take a stab at this and someone correct me if I'm wrong. The set of numbers shows the average outflow of water from the dam per day. The first number is usually the current day if you look at the post after around 2:00PM. The 2nd number is tomorrow and so on and so forth. I believe that 3.2 is 3200 CFS. When Cumberland is running at full tilt it can spit out around 20,000 CFS or more, so you can see that the water release is at a much lower average. Now you can't really tell what the release schedule is from this data, it is just an average. They could relase 3,200 CFS all day or release 20,000 for just a few hours and shut it off, but you can make an assumption that the river level will be fairly low at these levels and shoals will be exposed at various points during the day. I will also say that these numbers will change each day and you can't really forecast the release levels for say 5 days out. You won't, however, see very drastic changes in these numbers unless we have heavy rain so you can make plans that if you see 3.2 four days out there's a pretty good chance that they won't be releasing a lot of water on that day. I do a lot of wading on Cumberland and generally when I see these numbers get around 7.0 and higher, there's not a whole lot of time for wading based on the water release schedule.

You should always check the TVA website the night before to get the actual water release for the next day. It usually updates for the next day in the early afternoon. I've never really seen them make changes to this schedule within 24 hours, but you should always be aware of changing water conditions. Would be interested to get a more scientific explanation on the numbers, these are just my observations.