Water Resources

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Army Corps of Engineers' management of the Hartwell, Russell, and Thurmond reservoirs in Georgia and South Carolina, focusing on the: (1) Corps' management of the reservoirs during the 1988 drought; (2) drought's effect on the reservoirs' ability to serve users; and (3) Corps' efforts to develop a drought contingency plan for the reservoirs.

GAO found that: (1) the Corps reduced releases from Lake Thurmond beginning in November 1987 and has maintained a constant release rate of 3,600 cubic feet per second since April 1988; (2) the levels of Lakes Thurmond and Hartwell were significantly affected by the drought; (3) the Corps gave water supply and quality maintenance the highest priority during the drought; (4) drought conditions severely curtailed recreational and hydropower uses of the reservoirs; and (5) the Corps was unable to generate sufficient hydropower to satisfy the Southeastern Power Administration's contractual obligations. GAO also found that the Corps: (1) had not completed its drought management plan when the current drought began; (2) did not complete the plan until more than 8 years after a regulation required it and more than 3 years after the Corps' initial target date for plan completion; (3) could have better maintained lake levels had it timely completed the plan; (4) has not completed drought contingency plans for over two-thirds of its water resource projects nationwide; and (5) failed to consider downstream inflows or worst-case scenarios in its drought management plan for the Savannah River Basin.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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