By Scott Wright

CENTRE — If you're a property owner in Cherokee County with a nice shoreline view of Weiss Lake in the summer and a mud hole for a back yard in the winter, the view from your back deck may be about to change for the better.

Alabama Power has agreed to pursue a request made five years ago by the Weiss Lake Improvement Association that would result in the halving of the winter draw-down level of Weiss Lake.

Currently, summer pool in Weiss Lake is 564 feet above sea level. In the winter months, the level is dropped by six feet, to 558 feet above sea level. If Alabama Power's pursuit of new federal regulations for Weiss Lake is successful, the winter level will rise to 561 feet above sea level.

In 2000, when Alabama Power began the process of renewing its federal license to operate Weiss Dam, officials from the utility notified residents of the Weiss Lake area that they wanted to gather input from locals regarding possible changes in the operation of the dam for the next 50 years. Local businessman and angler Jerry Culberson, who was serving as vice-president of the WLIA at that time, was the first to approach Alabama Power about increasing the wintertime level of the lake.

"It would be good for property owners, good for tourism and good for the fish in the lake," Culberson told The Post last week. "We hope this is going to happen in the next year or two."

Representatives from WLIA began working with and talking to officials from Alabama Power, hoping that the re-licensing process might be "a vehicle to achieve this goal," according to current WLIA member Bill O'Brien, who has attended many of the re-licensing meetings over the last five years.

"In our opinion we have been very successful with meeting and achieving the goals that we set for ourselves in 2000," O'Brien said. "Our thanks go out to Alabama Power for their cooperation, understanding and the highly professional manner in which they handled all the meetings and sometimes heated debates we had on the topic of raising the wintertime lake level."

O'Brien said that implementation of the new winter pool level will begin in January 2008, providing that the license renewal application is approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

"The only bad news is that if you own waterfront property and you were going to do some work on your seawall in the winter, you better hurry up and get it done," Culberson said. "Otherwise, all of this is great news for Cherokee County."

O'Brien said other parts of the negotiations between WLIA and Alabama Power dealt with delaying the initiation of the winter draw-down by one month, to the first of October. He said this would result in a longer length of time at full pool for the 30,000-acre Weiss reservoir. Also, the power company has agreed to build a floating dock at Cobia's Landing in Cedar Bluff and monitor sediment levels at predetermined locations along the Chattooga River and work with the WLIA to resolve any problems caused by sediment build-up in that area of the reservoir.

The Post was unable to speak with officials from Alabama Power by press time Friday afternoon. O'Brien indicated that the utility would probably not make an official statement until the license process was completed.

"They did tell us we could go ahead and publicize this information, though," he added.