We have a 22 achre lake that contained approxmately 144 achre feet of water when the lake was built in 1989.    The lake has 7 property owners on the lake.  The lake was originally catagortized, low hazzard.  Several years  ago the hazzard classification was changed to high, although no changes to the lake had occured. 

Our concern is that our small lake is in the same catagory as the largest lakes in the state. There are no occupied dwellings in the flood plane, however on a sunny day breach the state estimates, based on the original capacity, that there will be several inches of water across US-17, approxmately 1 mile downstream.  

We would like to see the state modify the regulations to recognize the difference in the magatude of property damage and/or loss of life.  Given the significant differences in the sizes of small lakes like ours and the larger lakes, to have the same classsifications is unecessarily onerous on small dam owners and dilutes the state's ability to adequately regulate and monitor the dams that are truly high risk. There are at least two potential solutions:

1.  Add additional catagories within the high hazzard classification that realistically take in to account the risk to property and life. 

2.  Add additional dam classifications, beyond the present three taking into account the size of the lakes and their obvious differences in potential risks to loss of life and/of property damage.

These changes would allow the state agencies to concentrate on the dams that truly high risk.