No

big mystery... it seems to be a combination of

drought, a leaking dam and industrious beavers

that emptied Lake Bennett in the Crystal Lakes

subdivision on Ga. Highway 54, according to state

and local officials.

Residents

and owners of the Olde Mill Steakhouse, a scenic

restaurant that overlooks the 150-year-old dam

that created Lake Bennett, have been baffled in

recent weeks because the lake, which has

withstood many a drought, suddenly went dry.

Dozens

of large fish have died, and Olde Mill owners

Neil and Kay Davis have spent hours cleaning up

the carnage. They've been looking for answers,

and have called in state agencies and county

experts to try and find them.

This

past weekend, Davis and neighbors cleared out

several beaver dams on Sandy Creek, which feeds

the lake, and life began to return.

"We

did get some water in the lake," said Kay

Davis. "The fish stopped dying because we

got some oxygen in the lake, and that buys a

little bit of time," she said.

Her

husband is "trying to continue to do some

repairs to the dam," she added. The ancient

dam has been leaking for decades, and Davis is

taking advantage of the low water to try and plug

some holes, she said. It's difficult, because the

dam is nothing more than a pile of rocks with

some concrete in it, but they'll do the best they

can, she said.

"There

just isn't any water," said Fayetteville

Water Department director Rick Eastin last week

during an inspection tour of some of the

headwaters of Whitewater Creek, another tributary

that feeds the lake. The untrained eye could see

old water marks and could tell that water levels

in every tributary had dropped by more than half.

"This

year, I've seen streams that usually flow well

even in dry conditions, but now there's hardly

any flow at all," said James Elliott, the

state Environmental Protection Division's agent

for Fayette and surrounding areas.

Elliott

is investigating whether a new concrete culvert

that channels Sandy Creek under Sandy Creek Road

might have been built a little higher than the

old culvert, and thus might be holding back some

of the water, but he said it's unlikely to be

causing much of the problem in any case.

"That's

an 80-acre lake," he said. "I didn't

see that much of a problem," he said of the

culvert.

State

Department of Natural Resources experts are

studying the dead fish to make sure they didn't

die from pollution, he said, adding that

inspection of the surrounding area didn't suggest

any such thing. "It's pretty clear that they

died from lack of oxygen," he said,

"but you have to check to make sure."

The

only permanent solution, said Kay Davis, is rain.

Clearing out the beavers will release some pent

up water, but that will eventually be used up

unless nature replaces it.

"It's

just a combination of things," she said.

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