AmerenUE has scheduled public workshops in each of the four counties surrounding Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks to give interested persons an opportunity to ask questions and provide comments on the company’s draft Shoreline Management Plan. Development of the plan was required as part of a new 40-year license for Bagnell Dam and the Osage Power Plant that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved on March 30, 2007. All public comments will be reviewed and considered prior to finalizing the draft and submitting it to FERC for review and approval before March 30, 2008.
Each workshop will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. The format is informal, and the public is invited to stop by anytime during that period to discuss the plan with AmerenUE and other representatives. Dates and locations are:
• Monday, Nov. 26, at the Warsaw Community Building, 181 W. Harrison, Warsaw.
• Tuesday, Nov. 27, at the Morgan County Library, 600 N. Hunter, Versailles.
• Wednesday, Nov. 28, at the Eldon Community Center, 309 E. Second St., Eldon.
• Thursday, Nov. 29, at the Osage Beach City Hall, 1000 City Parkway, Osage Beach.
AmerenUE expects to have a copy the plan available on the Ameren Web site early next week to give interested persons an opportunity to review it prior to the workshops. The plan will be located under “Lake of the Ozarks” at www.ameren.com/environment. Copies will also be available for review at AmerenUE’s Shoreline Management Office, 1028 Bagnell Dam Blvd., in Lake Ozark.
AmerenUE is responsible for certain shoreline management activities at the Lake of the Ozarks under provisions of its federal license for the operation of Bagnell Dam and the Osage Power Plant, which created the lake in 1931.
The draft Shoreline Management Plan is a modified version of a plan that was originally submitted for public comment in 2005. It has been revised to address concerns raised by some property owners, developers, public officials and others over proposed restrictions on the size, separation and placement of new boat docks in environmentally and culturally sensitive areas along the shoreline.
The revised plan focuses on all aspects of AmerenUE’s shoreline management responsibilities at the lake, including excavation and bank stabilization provisions to address federal and state resource agency desires to protect sensitive areas such as heads of coves, wetlands, and historically or culturally significant areas.
AmerenUE Real Estate General Supervisor Mark Jordan says the draft plan has been reviewed by a 40-member shoreline management team composed of lake residents, public officials, resource agency officials and business leaders that was originally formed in 2001. Now the general public will have an opportunity to review the plan, ask questions, and provide comments at the lake-area workshops.
“Due to the wide range of interests at the lake, it is impossible to develop a plan that will completely satisfy everyone,” Jordan says, “but we believe this plan balances the major issues that are of most importance to the majority of people who have a stake in the future of the Lake of the Ozarks.”
AmerenUE is a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Ameren Corporation. The Ameren companies serve 2.4 million electric customers and nearly one million natural gas customers in a 64,000-square-mile area of Missouri and Illinois.
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SOURCE: AmerenUE
CONTACT: Mike Cleary, +1-573-681-7137, for AmerenUE