Officials dedicate Big Cherry Dam


Big Stone Gap - Big Cherry Dam Dedication Event
Photo by Chris Starnes, LENOWISCO PDC

By STEPHEN IGO - KINGSPORT TIMES NEWS
Published Thursday, July 7, 2005

BIG STONE GAP - Lenowisco Planning District Commission Executive Director Ron Flanary said there's really only one perfect way to herald the coming-out party for the sparkly new imposing edifice that will assume impoundment duties for Big Stone Gap's Big Cherry Reservoir.

"About the only thing I can say about today is ... dam!" Flanary told an appreciative crowd during Wednesday's dedication ceremonies for the reservoir's new dam.

Gates, their actuators and associated electrical equipment are still being installed, but the $8.23 million bulwark appears more than up to its future task of containing 600 million gallons of mountaintop lake.

That's 200 million gallons more than the old 1930s dam, located about 200 yards upstream of the new structure, could manage. In its retirement and at the reservoir's new full capacity, the old structure will be submerged when the Big Cherry fills itself to a higher brim.

U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., called the dam a "truly major and noteworthy project in Southwest Virginia" that will not only relieve dam failure worries for folks way, way downstream - the Big Cherry is snuggled into a beautiful mountaintop retreat high above the Powell Valley - but is a vital part of a regional water system. The town will link up to the city of Norton's water supply and plans on selling water to other areas of Wise County and portions of Scott and Lee counties, too.

Boucher said what started out as a search for funding resources to address safety concerns "rapidly led to a broader project to enable Big Stone Gap to earn revenues by selling water from a larger reservoir to neighboring localities. We celebrate the completion of that larger combined project today."

Big Stone Gap Mayor Bill Cole said the project "has been in our sights for years, and we're very excited." He said the town is now "in the regional water business. It will be good for (water customers), and it's going to be good for us."

Funding remains a touchy subject. Prior to Wednesday's dedication, former Town Councilman Harold Kirk pulled out a notebook where his math puts the town's debt on federal loans at somewhere in the $7 million neighborhood, a debt Kirk said Big Stone Gap taxpayers can ill afford.

Boucher told the crowd he is still pursuing funding to help alleviate the debt load, and state Delegate Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, all but guaranteed another round of funds from the Virginia Tobacco Commission.

The commission meets again Friday, Kilgore said, and the extra funding is on the agenda. The commission has already provided $250,000 to the project.

Kilgore said he is sometimes asked what a water project has to do with the economic development goals of the Tobacco Commission, and his reply is, "You've got to have water before you can create jobs."

Boucher said he is confident more federal grant dollars, along with other funding sources such as the Tobacco Commission, will help relieve the debt load.

The related Norton/Big Stone Gap interconnection project adds another $1.8 million to the cost of what is a regional water supply project.

The project engineer for the dam is Dewberry & Davis, and the main construction contractor is Estes Brothers Construction Inc. of Jonesville. Project management was provided by the Lenowisco Planning District Commission.