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 and the state's concurrence the consultants estimate the mitigation requirement at roughly $21 million.

Young summarized a preliminary budget and schedule. He said the city has spent about $750,000 on the baseline environmental assessment, cultural resources review and alternatives analysis to date. Additional work and costs he outlined included: - $50,000 to complete the permit application, - $150,000 for parts of the alternatives analysis already budgeted, - $500,000 for geotechnical exploration, - $35 million for design and construction of a new roller-compacted concrete dam (consultants said building a new dam downstream is likely cheaper and safer than trying to raise the existing structure), - about $1 million for clearing inundated areas, and - roughly $21 million for mitigation under the agreed approach.

"We can save our client $32,000,000," Young told the council, describing negotiations with state reviewers. He then summarized the consultants' current estimate: "We think it's a $60,000,000 project now."

On schedule, consultants told council they expect to run a competitive procurement for a full-delivery mitigation contractor (a firm that locates, acquires and restores wetlands/streams to supply mitigation credits). They asked for authorization to begin that procurement; Young said the city could select a contractor about three months after issuing a request for proposals and that the mitigation-plan work could take roughly nine months after the contractor is onboard. With that timeline the team expects to submit a complete permit application in April 2026 and, with 12 to 15 months of agency review, receive permits near April 2027. Design and construction would follow; the consultants sketched a construction window that could begin in mid-2029 and finish by late 2031, subject to permit and seasonal constraints for roller-compacted concrete placement.

Council members asked about political and regulatory risk if key agency personnel change during the multi-year process. Young said permitting long projects requires persistence but told council he expects the technical reviewers to remain engaged even if agency leadership changes.

Council did not take a formal vote. Staff asked the council to authorize the procurement process for a full-delivery mitigation contractor so the city could assemble the mitigation plan required to file permits.

If authorized, consultants said the city would pay the mitigation contractor in stages: planning, design/specifications for mitigation sites, then mitigation construction and monitoring. Young and other consultants emphasized that mitigation for reservoir-raising projects is large-scale (they said mitigation requirements could be 2:1 replacement of impacted wetlands under state/federal rules) and requires property acquisition, restoration design and long-term monitoring.

Council members and staff discussed funding pathways briefly. Consultants identified potential sources including the State Revolving Fund, economic development grants and other federal programs, but said the project is unusually large and will likely require a mix of funding approaches.

The presentation closed with the consultants reiterating the ask: permission to initiate the procurement for one or more full-delivery mitigation contractors and proceed through the planning steps that lead to a formal permit submittal.

Ending: Council members asked staff to bring the procurement authorization back for council consideration; no final decision was recorded at the session.