By admin 
Water levels on Lake Murray are about to drop, and boaters are being warned to be mindful of lower surface levels when they are on the lake.
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Dominion Energy, which owns and operates the 78-square-mile lake outside Columbia, announced Wednesday that the company will begin a drawdown of the lake levels starting this month and continuing into next year.
The lake will drop to a low of 350 feet in December, Dominion said in a media release. Water levels won’t start rising again until the end of January 2027, the company said.
It’s the largest drawdown of lake levels Dominion has done since January 2023.
The goal is to control the growth of vegetation, which can spring up in shallow coves and become entangled in boat propellers. Lower levels will allow those plants to dry out and freeze over the winter, Dominion said.
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“Every few years we lower the lake so that we can limit growth of certain aquatic vegetation,” Iris Griffin, Dominion’s vice president of power generation in South Carolina, said in a statement. “If left unchecked, the vegetation can negatively affect water quality and make recreational use of the lake difficult. The drawdown also gives lake residents and businesses an opportunity to perform maintenance and repairs on their private docks or shorelines.”
But the drawdown does pose a potential challenge for boaters on the lake. Lake Murray’s inlets and coves will be shallower than usual, and watercraft are advised to be cautious in certain areas.
The lake should return to 358 feet by late spring, just in time for the next warm-weather boating season, the company said, depending on rainfall levels and river flows over the next few months.
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