The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Mobile District has extended its public scoping to Jan. 14, 2013 for the proposed update of the Master Water Control Manual for the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin (ACF) in Alabama, Florida and Georgia. This extension is due to several agencies requesting additional time to submit their analysis and studies to USACE.
“As a result of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruling in June 2011 and the June 2012 legal opinion of USACE Chief Counsel regarding authority to accommodate municipal and industrial water supply from the Buford Dam/Lake Lanier project we are resuming the manual update process,” said E. Patrick Robbins, Mobile District Public Affairs Officer.
The manual update process will consider operations for all authorized purposes on the Federal Projects (recreation, navigation, water quality, fish and wildlife, etc) along with an expanded range of water supply alternatives associated with the Buford Dam/Lake Lanier project, including current levels of water supply withdrawals and additional amounts that Georgia has requested from Lake Lanier and downstream of Atlanta.
The Public is invited to provide comments to help focus the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on significant areas of concern or proposed alternatives that should be considered in the EIS.
“We had scoping periods in 2008 and 2009 when we first began the manual update process,” Robbins said. “Any comments previously submitted will be reviewed and addressed in the current re-scoping so comments previously provided do not need to be resubmitted.”
Individuals should submit scoping comments by Jan. 14, 2013 using one of three methods:
*Submit comments online at www.sam.usace.army.mil
*E-mail comments to acf-wcm@usace.army.mil
*Mail comments to: Tetra Tech, Attention: ACF-WCM, 61 Saint Joseph Street, Ste 550, Mobile, AL 36602-3521.