Next week will be the fourth anniversary of the 2016 Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act that led to what we saw during the drawdown last year.
It’s been a crazy four years, but a couple weeks ago, a federal judge finally put an end to the craziness. Judge Richard Gergel ruled the Corps’ rock weir plan did not comply with the WIIN Act. He permanently enjoined, or stopped, the Corps from building it.
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This is a really big win for our area. And it’s really important to look closely at exactly which part of the WIIN Act the Corps violated. Basically, the Corps ignored the part of the law that limited local impacts and protected locals. According to the WIIN Act, whatever the Corps did, Congress required that the pool be “maintained as in existence” when the law was enacted.
It’s no mystery how the Corps “maintained” the pool when the law was enacted. Immediately after the drawdown, Congressman Rick Allen sent a letter to the Corps reminding them that on the date the WIIN Act was enacted, the pool was at around elevation 114.5. This was because, as the Corps tells us, since the 1930s they have “maintained” the pool by “targeting” this 114.5 elevation. During droughts, we can lift the pool ,and during flood we can let the high flows pass. We can also pass sediment and snags and we can accommodate events like the regatta, Ironman, and boat races.
Judge Gergel noted that even the experts Congress required the Corps to hire to review their plans said the Corps’ plan didn’t comply with the WIIN Act because it didn’t “maintain” the pool at 114.5. So, Judge Gergel ruled the Corps’ plan—and, in fact, all the plans they had considered to date—did not comply with the law. He literally told the Corps to go “back to the drawing board.”
It’s not surprising we find ourselves here because this process was being rushed to keep harbor on track. The studies the Corps did to justify their plan were—as described by the Augusta Chronicle—panned by the experts hired by the Corps to review their plans. That the studies were lacking was shown during the drawdown when the pool was much lower than they predicted and the “hazardous” training walls were exposed above the surface. But the Corps refused to actually look at the impacts to locals. Instead they initiated a hurried plan to remove the training walls to help make the pool less “hazardous.”
The cost numbers for the various plans they have studied have been a moving target, and they have consistently refused to share inspection reports for the lock and dam so that we can see what (if anything) exactly needs repair on the Lock and Dam so that we could weigh options and at least see how they were weighing them.
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And this court decision came not a minute too soon. USACE was planning to start removing the lock and dam and the park as soon as the bidding process had been initiated. This was taking place even though good faith negotiations were ongoing and Augusta and others were working to get the law changed.
Really, the biggest take away from the injunction is that, for the first time in this whole sorry process, we know we won’t get railroaded.
Now we can take a deep breath and find a solution that locals will actually support. Georgia Ports Authority, in the Augusta Chronicle and other places, has made the case there was local support for the WIIN Act when it passed, meaning that, basically, “we asked for it.” Judge Gergel has put that idea to bed. In the hearing, he drew attention to the “mudflats” and the conditions we saw during the drawdown. While I, myself, wasn’t in government when the law was passed in 2016, I’m not aware of anyone who’s in favor of what we saw during the drawdown. At any rate, since that time local governments and South Carolina made it perfectly clear there is no local support for this when we filed federal lawsuits and committed to spending huge sums of taxpayer money on lawyers, lobbyists, experts to fight the plan.
Does anyone really think local governments signed to up for passing a law that would then be misinterpreted (in ways even the legislators who passed the law, experts and a fed judge would disagree with), and that would require them to spend huge sums of taxpayer money on lawyers, lobbyists, experts and other things just to avoid what we saw during the drawdown?
It’s pretty safe to say there’s no local support at all for what the Corps was planning. The recent decision is a big win. Now we have time to find a plan that has real local support.
Contact your elected officials to make your voice heard. In South Carolina, State Sen. Tom Young and State Rep. Bill Hixon have been the driving force behind this fight the whole time. U.S. Sen. Joe Wilson has been right there, too ,and in Georgia, U.S. Rep. Rick Allen has always led the charge. Reach out to all these folks with your ideas. And tell them thanks. Because we won’t be getting railroaded.
Brandon Garrett is a member of the Richmond County Commission.
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