Overview

Lake Rhodhiss

Lake Rhodhiss is a 3,515-acre eutrophic reservoir located on the Catawba River in Western North Carolina. This lake lies within Burke and Caldwell Counties and is a run-of-the-river reservoir located on the Catawba River downstream of Lake James and upstream of Lake Hickory. It was impounded in 1925 by Duke Power Company for generating hydroelectric power. Water from the lake is also used for waste assimilation, drinking water, industrial water supply, recreation, and habitat for fish and wildlife species.

Lake Rhodhiss Watershed

The watershed area of Lake Rhodhiss is 710 square miles in size, and the lake has the greatest watershed: surface area ratio of any North Carolina impoundment along the Catawba. The major land cover categories are forest (85%), agriculture (11%) and urban (3%). Forested areas dominate the watershed north and west of Lenoir. Wholesale Ornamental Horticulture Nurseries located in the floodplains and terraces of local streams has become the dominate form of Agriculture in the watershed. Urban uses are generally confined to Lenoir, Morganton and Marion, as well as the I-40 and US 70 corridors between Morganton and the Hildebran in Burke County.

Problems

Lake Rhodhiss Tributaries

Degraded water quality conditions have been documented in several streams located in the Lenoir and Morganton areas by the state of North Carolina since the 1950s. Currently several streams within the watershed are listed as impaired by DWQ including Hunting Creek, Irish Creek, Lower Creek and its tributaries of Bristol, Greasy, Husband, Spainhour and Zack Fork Creeks. Other streams within the watershed, while not officially classified as impaired, are also recognized as experiencing water quality problems like Muddy and Silver Creeks.

Lake Rhodhiss

Of the seven lakes in North Carolina on the Catawba River, Lake Rhodhiss has the largest watershed covering 454,400 acres. Monitoring by DWQ in 2002 identified frequent violations of the state water quality standard for two parameters, percent dissolved oxygen saturation and pH, resulting in DWQ designating Lake Rhodhiss as impaired. This designation was issued because of problems linked to eutrophication resulting from excessively high nutrient concentrations in the lake.

Within the 2004 Basinwide Plan, DWQ recommended that a locally developed watershed management plan for Lake Rhodhiss be produced as a first step towards reducing future nutrient loadings to the reservoir. Recent work by Duke Energy as part of the utility’s relicensing effort suggests that reducing nutrients loads to Lake Rhodhiss may also have a beneficial effect on water quality conditions in Lake Hickory, located immediately down river.

Solution

Efforts undertaken now to improve existing water quality concerns could help reverse impaired lake conditions.

Developing and implementing a watershed restoration plan will help reverse the increasing nutrient trends and save valuable resources in the long run. Just as importantly, developing a locally-initiated plan should result in stronger local support and acceptance thereby facilitating the implementation of the plan.

We are all part of the problem and can be Part of the solution!