Fontana Dam – It’s no surprise that the county’s smallest municipality is relying largely on revenue from a popular vacation destination to shoulder the load of the 2023-24 budget.
Fontana Dam is literally a one-horse town: its only business is the expansive Fontana Village Resort and Marina, which attracts a wide variety of guests and events year-round. Its peak season for customers is March – September.
For use of the town’s water and wastewater system – as well as garbage disposal – the resort pays user fees to the town.
Of the $238,742.96 projected for the fiscal year ahead, $150,000 of that will come from those fees. Water/wastewater is expected to account for $79,100 of income, according to the budget proposed to the town council at its June 21 meeting.
Fontana Dam’s millage rate is the only one in the county that will remain unchanged – Graham County, Lake Santeetlah and Robbinsville all lowered the millage rate in its respective budgets – with the town that recorded just 34 residents at the 2020 census remaining at 0.554 cents. The council passed the ordinance unanimously – knowing fully just how every penny will count for much-needed upgrades.
Water woes
Much has been discussed about the unusually-high water loss the town experiences on a daily basis.
Sure, the resort has two pools and a bevy of guests that rely on the newest water plant in North Carolina (construction completed in 2015; water production began in 2017), but the town’s maintenance crews and water-plant staff alike continue to scratch their heads and wonder: where is the water going?
The answer may lie in the fact that most of the town’s lines are still the originals, used to run water to residents that lived in the village during the construction of the dam itself – dating the system to the 1940s. The pipes are clay and after 80-plus years in service, are more than overdue for an upgrade.
The council has been aware of the issue for a while, but funding has been a challenge. Fontana Dam has been working with the Mountain West Partnership to secure a grant for repairs/upgrades, but the wheels of paperwork turn slow.
Carrie Stewart is the water plant’s ORC (Operator in Responsible Charge) and after coming on full-time with Fontana last year, has also tried to trace the source.
Point blank, a portion of the system – somewhere – has to be expelling copious amounts of water.
“I still don’t understand why we can’t find any leaks to attribute to that,” town administrator Zelerie Rogers posed. “It makes no sense to me that we have such a huge water loss and we cannot find it – with everything that we’ve had and all the people that have walked the lines.”
Finding leaks and simply capping the flow at that point could lead to pressure build-up and pipe failure.
To perhaps put the losses in the best perspective yet, Stewart presented the council with a detailed analysis of water produced by the plant throughout 2023.
The numbers are alarming. Fontana Dam’s water plant is losing 70 percent of what it produces on a daily basis. Since January, 27,409,000 gallons of water has been produced; 19,186,300 gallons are unaccounted for. The plant averages a loss of 127,062 gallons daily.
Including the overarching issue of water loss alone, the increase in upkeep is a burden. Stewart estimates normal water loss elsewhere should hover between 5-15 percent; thus, employee labor at the plant is averaging 10.94 hours per day (a normal loss would require just 3-3.5 daily hours of production). Chemicals and lab supplies between July 2022 and April 2023 tallied $21,263.96.
Last year, the plant lost 46,680,000 gallons of the 66,686,000 it produced. Stewart added to the compounding list of concerns by pointing out the plant is allowed to produce up to 500,000 gallons per day, but if production numbers edge close to that long enough, the state will hand down an edict for expansion. Currently, the plant produces between 250,000-300,000 a day.
“Hopefully this offseason, there will be some action done,” said mayor Rob Hardy. “You try to fix the problem now and you could create a bigger problem in the middle of the season. You don’t want to do that.
“But we need to be having conversations about developing a plan. It could be complicated.”
“We need to make sure we know where the old lines are,” Stewart added. “That way, we know there’s not a line running wide open underground in the woods somewhere.”