Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander wants to put the Army Corps of Engineers under a microscope for its management of dams upstream from Nashville this week. Thursday he called for a hearing about water releases from Old Hickory and Percy Priest Lakes.
Both lakes reach unusually high elevations after a weekend of historic rainfall. Old Hickory even came within seven inches of the Corps of Engineers losing control. Corps officials say their management kept Nashville from seeing even more flooding on the Cumberland River.
Still, Alexander says questions should be asked in a U.S. Senate hearing.
“We could address the question of whether clear, consistent and correct information from the Army Corps of Engineers to the community could have saved millions of dollars in records, in homes, in lives even.”
Alexander says now is the time for cleaning up, but also asking what could be done better. He says the same questions – about communication from the Corps – were asked after Hurricane Katrina.
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