All Wet
The Memphis Commercial-Appeal reports on plans for a new reservoir in rural Carroll County, and speculates the new lake could be a catalyst for economic development in the economically distressed county.

I don't know if a fake lake can turn around the economic fortunes of a county, but I hope they're right. And if 10 years from now we look back and see lake-driven economic progress in Carroll County, the fact that the feds delayed the project for 20 years because of a myriad of environmental over-regulation will be all the more sad. Think of it: economic progress delayed for a generation of people because of concerns over wetlands.

After nearly two decades of studies and fruitless proposals, state and federal officials recently approved a Clean Water Act permit authorizing a reservoir along Reedy Creek, near U.S. 70.

For an object lesson on the merits of reservoirs, officials had to look only about 20 miles to the south, to Lexington, where Beech Lake and other reservoirs have attracted visitors and home-builders. "The development around those lakes is phenomenal," McBride said. But major funding and environmental obstacles stood in the way of the project. First, the right site had to be found. Officials looked at 11 potential reservoir locations, but most were deemed unfeasible because they would flood large wetland areas or have poor water quality. The Reedy Creek site was chosen primarily because it involves the least amount of wetlands. Still, it faced objections from environmental regulators. The dam, to be composed of 400,000 cubic yards of fill, will flood 9 miles of the creek, dramatically altering the aquatic habitat, and inundate 119 acres of wetlands.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, noting the damage, said in comments filed with the Corps of Engineers there was "lack of apparent need for this project." As EPA pointed out, Carroll County is only about an hour's drive from one of the largest reservoirs in the Southeast, Kentucky Lake.

That's the EPA for you - putting wetlands ahead of people! (And you just thought the purpose of the EPA was to protect the environment for the people who live in it!)

Local officials, in response, described the reservoir project as their best hope for improving the county's tax base and economy. Golf course developments, they said, aren't nearly as successful in luring development. The Clean Water Act permit was approved only after local officials offered an ambitious and complex plan to mitigate the environmental impacts. The mitigation plan includes the restoration of some 300 acres of wetlands that had been converted to crop fields and the preservation of 81 acres of existing swamp. Even more importantly, 2 miles of a local stream that had been routed into a flood-control canal will be put back in a meandering channel.