Nicole, my name is Ron Berry,county commissioner from Roane County, and Executive Board member of NACo. First,it is a pleasure to welcome you to our Roane County family. You will hear from us often and we look forward to meeting you. Actually, I will be in Nashville on Feb 28th attending our TCSA conference and will come by for a visit. Just a little background on our frustration with Nashville and Washington. I appointed the committee 4 yrs ago and they have done a tremendous job of compiling data and seeking out the most qualified experts in the country. I arranged a meeting in Sept of 2021 with all players;TVA,TWRA,US Fisheries,and our committee. We have spoken with Congressmen,Senators and anyone that would listen,but thus far no one is listening. The Governor established a Commission but it has only met twice and no could speak from the public.
We are only about 2 yrs out before the Asian Carp will be in our lakes and we will be in the shape Ky is today. According to the experts outside of TVA,TWRA,there is only one way to keep the carp out of our lakes;and they know better. The barrier they propose is about 92% effective whereas the experts say we can achieve 99% with an electric barrier. The math is easy when the carp can lay 5 million eggs. There is a reason Ky harvested over 18 million lbs of carp. I know Monty has done some work and I guess I just wanted you to know we’ve spent years and hundreds of hours researching this problem and have decided we will take the matter to the people of the Region that will be lost and make noise from Nashville to Washington. It seems the only way to get attention is to gather a crowd and make noise. Thanks for your reply to the article. That was our committee’s start to our campaign to save our lake. Thanks to Rep Fritts for his interest and we know he’s in our corner.
Regards
Ron Berry