It’s the first week in August and an important week it is. The final stakeholder committee meetings to provide input for the development of the shoreline management plan are scheduled for Wednesday & Thursday. There are three committees; Land use, permitting and allowable use. The meetings this week are very important since this will be the final meeting of the groups and I anticipate the committees finalizing their recommendations.

When GRDA announced their plans for developing a shoreline management plan, most of us were too busy or just had other things we would rather do than take the time to get involved in the process. After all, who wanted to attend a series of meetings on something we weren’t sure we even understood? Not me! When someone suggested I get involved, I simply replied I thought the shoreline was fine in front of my place. Well guys and gals, it’s about much more than the shoreline in front of your place.

By now, each of you who have a dock permit has received a copy of the GRDA Shoreline Management Plan newsletter. You’ll note they are soliciting input on the shoreline management plan from one and all….not just the smp committees. Both the GRDA and Kleinschmidt and Associates, the engineering firm based in Maine developing the plan for GRDA, have insisted all along that the committees are just providing input for consideration and will be making no final decisions. But unless we voice our opinions, we are allowing less than thirty-five people to be the only input provided to the powers to be in spite of the fact there are thousands of us with a stake in the outcome.

I plan on posting a response on our organization’s behalf, but I would like your comments before I do that. The minutes of each of the committee meetings are available for your review at www.grda.com. I’ll try to get them posted to our site sometime today. And by-the-way, you can now go to our site without typing that long name….We have an alternate name which is not so lengthy…www.grandglue.com.

I’ll be posting a report no later than Friday with my observations of this week’s committee meetings and other information I can gather while lurking around the GRDA headquarters in Vinita.

It’s my personal belief that the shoreline management plan for our lake will be very similar to others prepared my Kleinschmidt & Associates. In an effort to educate the membership, I plan on providing a chart that can be found in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s SMP. For example, the chart clearly shows what could be done on the shoreline before the plan and after. It shows allowable private dock foot print size before the plan and the 1000 square  foot print size after the plan. The chart should bring a lot of focus to the importance of this issue.