Fontana Dam – It has became a light-hearted question around the small resort town: why the constant turnover on the Fontana Dam council?
The question answers itself – it’s literally a one-horse town, with Fontana Village Resort and Marina being the only business within its limits. Residents are 99.9 percent employees that work at the resort, so if a job change occurs, so does their zip code.
But the town had quite the conundrum to work through at its Feb. 15 council meeting: normally scrambling to find a replacement after someone resigns, there were three candidates present for a potential spot on the panel.
In the end, Joshua Grant was appointed.
A Fontana employee for the last three years, Grant looks to improve the outdoors program at the resort. He is an avid hiker; in fact, Grant traversed the famed Appalachian Trail in 2008.
Also considered were Carolina Vasquez and Tracy Williams. Vasquez, 31, is a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and has served on the Junaluska Leadership Council; Williams has been on the Fontana council twice before and started living/working at Fontana in 1996.
Water losses filling up
In the absence of ORC (Operator in Responsible Charge) Carrie Stewart, town administrator Zelerie Rogers presented
the water/wastewater report.
Lines were ran through the majority of the town in the 1940s – during the construction of Fontana Dam itself – and have really only been maintained/replaced as needed since. The newest wastewater plant in North Carolina (which opened in 2012) is housed in the town and has worked for over a decade to eradicate loss.
Currently, the town is pumping for 10 hours per day – netting 160,000 gallons of water, but Rogers noted that levels are dropping 18 feet a night.
With no map in place for the water lines, staff members are scratching their heads at this point about where the water is going. However, when a new lessee for the resort comes aboard, the council plans to address the matter right off the bat.
“We know where some leaks are, but not to be losing that amount,” Rogers noted.
The town has also applied for a
CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) through the Appalachian Regional Commission, to help replace multiple sections of suspected locations where leaks are occurring. Preliminary estimates of replacement are around $700,000 and Fontana Dam is waiting to hear whether the application will be approved.
“That won’t get us all the way down the road, but it would get us quite a way down the road,” mayor Rob Hardy pointed out. “We’re trying to develop plans, but it’s certainly to coincide with other plans.”