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C. REGIONAL DEMOGRAPHY AND LAND USE

1. Population

The principal population centers within a radius of 100 miles are shown in Fig. II-2. The largest city within 100 miles is Knoxville, Tennessee, 97 miles northwest, with a population (1970) of about 175,000. (Knoxville, though nearer to Oconee than Charlotte, North Carolina, is by comparison totally unrelated to the Station's service area and its impacts.) The nearest urban center is Anderson, South Carolina, 21 miles southeast, with a population (1970) of about 28,000. The accumulative populations

within 5 and 20 miles radius from the site shown in Fig. II-4 are for the year 1965 with projections for the year 2010. From the projected figures it can be shown that the population is expected to increase by more than 50% by the turn of the century, and the greatest percent increase will occur in the near vicinity of Keowee Dam, largely because of residential developments surrounding the lakes (Lake Keowee in particular). The population at and near the project site has changed little in many years, so the picture before site construction was essentially as shown in Fig. II-5. Note especially (i) the farm residence 1.2 miles east of the central Oconee Nuclear site, (ii) Keowee School (356 pupils) 3.8 miles west, (iii) Oconee Memorial Hospital (127 beds) at Seneca 8 miles south-southwest, (iv) Courtney Mills (250 employees) at Newry 5 miles south, and American Enka at Central 8 miles southeast.

Old Pickens

In the exclusion area itself (Fig. II-2), the Visitors Center, the lakeside recreational areas, and the Bachelor Quarters for employees constitute activity centers that stem directly from the project. Church (not used for regular services), a highway right-of-way, and 9.8 acres of the Hartwell Project are areas that are not owned by the applicant but come under the regulations of the exclusion area. been obtained to restrict the use of all the public areas.

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2. Land Use

The Keowee-Toxaway Project is located in the western portion of the applicant's service area (See Fig. I-1). Since World War II, there has been a change in this region away from a cotton economy to one of general manufacturing and industry. The result has been an increase in diverse manufacturing operations and a reorientation in the farming industry, with cotton being replaced by fruit, poultry, and dairy production. Viewed as a whole, the region is one consisting of small farms whose owners are also industrial workers, interspersed with industrial-sized farms that provide food for market. Some of the industries within 8 miles or so of Keowee Dam are shown in Fig. II-5.

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The 1-mile exclusion area includes the site of Old Pickens township, the structures of which, except for Old Pickens Church and one residence, were destroyed in 1868. The Director of the Pendleton District of the South Carolina State Historical and Recreational Commission supplied this information.

Lake Keowee floods an area that includes the site of Old Fort Prince George (an early British outpost) and the site of old Keoweetown (headquarters of the lower Cherokee Nation). Before the flooding, extensive diggings were made for archeological salvage at these two historical sites. The artifacts that were found are in the possession of state and local museums. This work was conducted by the University of South Carolina using a grant made by the applicant. An old covered bridge that crossed the Keowee River was moved and restored at Keowee-Toxaway State Park. In addition, all graves and cemeteries in the areas that were to be inundated were moved to new locations.

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The area is drained by the Keowee and Little Rivers, which join some 7 miles below the site to form the Seneca River. The Seneca River is a major tributary of the Savannah River.

When the Seneca River was dammed to form the Hartwell Reservoir, water backed up into the lower Keowee and Little Rivers. The Keowee and Little Rivers, now separately dammed (Fig. II-3), form a single lake, Lake Keowee. These dams are about 160 feet high, and the impounded waters (Keowee Lake) furnish the energy to drive the Keowee hydroelectric power station. Lake Keowee is about 20 miles long and has a volume, when full, of about one million acre-feet. Upstream from Lake Keowee on the Keowee River will be the Jocassee Reservoir, with a 360-foot-high dam under construction, and a storage capacity of a little over one million acre-feet. The Jocassee Reservoir will be used for pumped storage, producing electricity during the day from water that is pumped back again into the reservoir at night.

Because of these various dams, lakes, and reservoirs, the natural flow of the rivers is greatly altered. Before the dams were built, the average flow of the Keowee River near what is now the upper end of Keowee Lake was 465 cubic feet per second. The minimum flow was 57 cubic feet per second, and the maximum was 21,000. The combined flow of the Keowee and Little

Rivers 1 mile below their confluence, in what is now the upper part of the Hartwell Reservoir, was 1140 cubic feet per second; the minimum flow was 120, and the maximum 25,200. With the creation of Lake Keowee, the maximum discharge into upper Hartwell Reservoir through the Keowee hydroelectric plant is 19,800 cubic feet per second; the minimum discharge attainable is 30 cubic feet per second. (Flow through Little River Dam is negligible.) The average discharge of Hartwell Reservoir is 4,400 cubic feet per second.

The Station is near the ridgeline between the Keowee and Little River valleys and is more than 100 feet above the maximum known flood in either valley. The dams on the lakes further reduce the possibility of a Station flood. The design discharge rate of the spillway for Lake Keowee is 105,000 cubic feet per second and for Lake Jocassee, 70,500 cubic feet per second.

In 1965 a sample of water from the Keowee River near what is now the upper end of Lake Keowee was analyzed by the U.S. Geological Survey as follows:

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