Crossville hears refined Meadow Park Lake dam plan; consultants estimate $60 million project

Consultants updated the Crossville City Council on plans to raise Meadow Park Lake and presented a refined cost and schedule for a project they said would secure the county's raw water supply for decades.

Kevin Young, a consultant leading the presentation, told council that raising Meadow Park Lake could double the lake's safe yield by increasing the normal pool by about 16 feet. He said the county currently relies on three raw water sources ' Miller Park Lake, Lake Holiday and Otter Creek Lake ' and that the increased volume at Meadow Park would, together with those supplies, meet projected raw water demand over the next 50 years.

The project will inundate streams and wetlands regulated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Young said, and therefore requires permits and mitigation. He said the Corps has a standard operating procedure the city could use and that state reviewers recently agreed to follow the Corps approach, a change Young said reduces the mitigation bill by about $32 million. Using the state's then-current approach had produced a much larger mitigation estimate; with the Corps method…