Crossville’s plan to raise the dam at Meadow Park Lake to increase the city’s water supply has been deemed unsafe, according to a new report.
Instead, the city would need to build a new dam, according to the J.R. Wauford & Company Director of Engineering Kevin Young. He reported to City Council during a Tuesday work session. Young said the best location for a new dam would be downstream from the current dam. Young said the new dam would be built with lower compacted concrete technology.
“That’s taking concrete that’s really dry just enough water to make it stick together,” Young said. “It looks more like asphalt than concrete and you can square it like asphalt and roll it with a steel roller, and it makes a great dam, and that’s gonna be the most economical way to go.”
Young said the current dam has too many cracks and structural issues to work with. Fixing those issues and trying to increase its size would likely be cost prohibitive.
The price tag for a new dam could be in the $60 million range.
Young sought approval from the council to move forward with the next step and that was to hire a mitigation contractor to form a detailed mitigation plan that is needed to apply for a permit. Young said forming a detailed mitigation plan would cost around $21 million but the city could break it up into three phases should they choose to proceed with the project.
“The first part will be just enough to have a mitigation plan to solve this paperwork, just enough to have a mitigation plan for the permit application so we can submit it,” Young said. “That’s the big chunk that we don’t have right now and we don’t know on a project this size what that’s gonna be but we think it will be somewhere in the $100,000-$200,000 range. Then that will not be a complete self-construction drawings for the mitigation, that will be the second part is finishing what they start to get what we need for the printed application then the third, the big chunk would be the construction.”
Young said city will have to purchase land around Meadow Park lake that the city does not already own as part of the project. Young said he estimates purchasing the necessary land would cost around $80,000.
“You already own most of it,” Young said. “More than half of it, but you are gonna have to purchase a band. You don’t have to buy the whole property but you are gonna have to purchase some distance back from the top water level and own that according to this permit.”
Young said the city has already committed $750,000 to the project and that the remainder of the project would cost an estimated $58 million. Upon discussions of how the council could pay for such a large project, it was determined there were not many avenues of finding funding for the project. One of the possible avenues suggested was a municipal bond.
Young gave a timeline to the council for the project. Young said if everything goes to plan, the construction for the new dam could begin in June of 2029 and be completed in 2031.
