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R&B singer Usher’s ex-wife is calling for the draining of Georgia’s largest lake, where her son was fatally injured 11 years ago.
Fashion designer Tameka Foster has collected more than 2,500 signatures for her online petition urging officials to “drain, clean and restore” Lake Sidney Lanier to allow for safety improvements and the removal of dangerous debris and other obstructions.
Kile Glover, her 11-year-old son with Bounce TV founder Ryan Glover, died in July 2012 after the boy, who was floating in an inner tube on the lake, was hit by a watercraft.
“Draining, cleaning, and restoring Lake Lanier is not only necessary, but an opportunity to honor the memory of those who lost their lives and prevent further tragedy,” Foster wrote in her Change.org petition, which she also promoted on her Instagram page.
Located about an hour’s drive northeast of Atlanta, Lake Lanier covers an area of nearly 60 square miles (155 square kilometers) and has water depths of up to 160 feet (49 meters). It’s far from just a haven for millions of boaters, anglers and other annual visitors.
According to the conservation group Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, the lake provides drinking water for about five million people. And the Buford Dam at the southern end of the lake generates hydroelectric power for the greater Atlanta area.
The Army Corps of Engineers built Lake Lanier in the 1950s. The Corps’ county office in Mobile, Alabama, which still operates the lake, did not immediately respond to phone and email messages asking for comment Thursday.
According to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, heavy traffic on the lake has resulted in hundreds of boat collisions over the past three decades. The agency reported more than 170 boating and drowning deaths between 1994 and 2018.
Foster and Usher married in 2007 and divorced two years later.