CENTRE — Alabama Power Company opened a dedicated shoreline management office here in 2006. Last week, after five years circling the shores of Weiss Lake, Tommy Miller and his team of contractors made the decision to go public with what they have discovered so far.

Miller's ongoing assessment of every structure sitting inside the massive easement around the company's 30,200-acre reservoir in Cherokee County is in, and the current tally is just over 4,400.

“It's been a work in progress for several months, but we came up with the final number earlier this month,” Miller told The Post last week. “In our observations from the water, we have come up with 4,406 structures.”

Miller was quick to point out that nearly half those structures – 1,883, to be exact – are campers and other types of recreational vehicles that are considered temporary and pose no threat to the company's easement rights.

A spokeswoman for Alabama Power said the company had no preconceived notions about the number of structures Miller's survey would discover.

“We went into this study unsure of what the final number would be,” Alyson Fuqua said. “We opened our shoreline management office in 2006 and since then we have … ratcheted up our response. We're continuing to do that with these latest efforts at compliance.”

Miller said questions about compliance arise most often among the 814 items in a category on his list officially labeled as “houses.”

“The category can include camper trailers with permanent additions built on, or storage sheds or camper sheds that have been converted into enclosed, fully-habitable structures,” Miller said. “That's the number we're keying on, 814, to work to get to zero.”

Often, Miller said, structures in the “houses” category have been rendered habitable to the point of containing sheet rock walls, indoor plumbing and full-sized appliances, in violation of the permitting process Alabama Power established on Weiss Lake in 1991. Therefore, those structures are all illegal, Miller said, according to both shoreline management officials at Alabama Power and the deeds the owners signed when they bought the property to begin with.

“We'll be asking anyone with something like that to take it all out, cover it with screen wire and keep it open so the water can flow,” Miller said. “The displacement of water created by a 2,000-square-foot house that used to be a camper shed is a major issue.”

Miller said Alabama Power polices its easement in order to ensure the free-flow of water during a flood event. Anything that impedes the natural rise and fall of water risks pushing that volume out of the easement and into areas not set aside for flood control.

Miller said the Weiss flood easement varies from as high as 578 ft. above sea level at the Georgia state line to 572 ft. above sea level at the powerhouse in Leesburg.

“The elevation of the easement changes with the elevation of the river as it moves downstream,” he said.

Miller explained that his office has been using overhead photographs to sniff out any suspected violations before inspecting the sites in person.

“First we look on the [satellite imagery] for ground marks and trees, things like that,” Miller explained. “If the structure is close, but out of the easement, we're OK with that. If it looks like it's half inside the easement, we'll shoot an elevation. If someone disputes what we find, we will respectfully ask them to have their own survey conducted and show us the results.”

Miller said he feels confident most property owners will be amenable to making modifications – oftentimes minor – to allow non-habitable structures to remain in place.

“If we go out in our ground-truthing and find a structure is actually a 20-by-20 ft. cook shed that simply needs some vents placed in the walls, that's a simple cure,” he said. “We've had folks do that, and then that's a number we can check off the list.”

Miller said anyone whose property contains a structure that has been identified as possibly lying inside the flood easement will soon receive a letter from his office notifying them that a further investigation will follow.

“Some of those letters will begin going out as early as the end of next week,” Miller said on June 15.