Continuing Rains increasing Water Releases

Following extensive rain in the upper Savannah River basin and more forecasted, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District began releasing stored floodwaters from Hartwell, Richard B. Russell and J. Strom Thurmond lakes Monday. Inflows from the recent rainfall pushed elevations into the flood control storage pool at all three reservoirs. Water managers directed the release of water through the spillway gates at Hartwell Dam Tuesday morning to lower the reservoir to below 665 feet above mean sea level (ft-msl), the top of the spillway gates. As of noon Tuesday, elevation at Hartwell Lake was 664.8 ft.msl, at Richard B. Russell, 477.5 ft.-msl, and at J. Strom Thurmond 331.8 ft.-msl.  For the next several weeks water will be released from the flood storage pools at Thurmond, Russell and Hartwell Dams until all flood storage pools drop to near guide curve for this time of year, or 660 ft.-msl at Hartwell, 475 ft-msl at Russell and 330 ft.-msl at Thurmond. The flood storage pools are the capacity of the reservoirs above “full pool.” The flood storage pools temporarily store excess storm runoff in the three-lake Savannah River Basin system. The public can follow the management of its reservoirs and the Savannah River through the Corps of Engineers blog Balancing the Basin at http://balancingthebasin.armylive.dodlive.mil/.