Despite the hopes of Raleigh leaders and the impression of a local congressman, the Army Corps of Engineers will not let Falls Lake stay a foot higher than normal, corps officials said Tuesday.

U.S. Rep. Brad Miller, a Raleigh Democrat, said Friday that phone conversations last week with Col. John Pulliam Jr., commander of the corps' Wilmington District, led him to think the federal agency in charge of Falls Lake would leave it 1 foot above its normal target level through June.

"I had the impression that he would exercise his discretion to do it," Miller said. "I wouldn't say that there was a commitment, a promise, or anything in writing. I did not get a blood oath."

Even so, Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker, who had urged the corps to let the lake rise 2 to 3 feet higher, on Friday called the purported accord "a reasonable compromise" that would buy the Capital City an extra month's supply of drinking water this summer.

"They have agreed to do it," he said last week -- prematurely, perhaps.

Several corps officials said Friday and again Tuesday that they have no plans to let the lake stay a foot higher than normal.

Instead, they said they'll keep releasing enough water through its dam gates during the next week or so to return the reservoir to within a few inches of its normal target level of 251.5 feet above sea level. It was about a foot higher than that Tuesday.

"The plan at Falls is for a gradual drawdown and to hold the level slightly higher than normal until we see what's going to happen" with rainfall, said Tony Young, a corps water control manager.

To drop the lake to near its target level, the corps is releasing 555 million gallons a day -- almost 14 times as much water as Raleigh is drawing from the 28-mile-long federal reservoir north of the Capital City.

Besides providing drinking water, Falls Lake by law also ensures a healthy flow in the Neuse River and provides floodwater storage to protect downstream communities. A rise in the lake's level during the 1990s reduced its flood-storage capacity 9 percent, putting downstream communities at a somewhat greater risk of a destructive deluge after heavy rains.

"We're already compromised," said Terry Brown, a corps senior water control manager. "We don't want to encroach much -- 6 inches would be pushing it. If we have more heavy rain, we could have another problem in the opposite direction."

But Meeker and Miller might get what they want anyway without officially getting it.

If heavy rains fall sporadically through the spring, the lake probably will hover slightly above its target level, corps spokeswoman Penny Schmitt said.

"We are going to operate the lake 'conservatively' to stay a little on the high side of the guide curve, but we have not made a commitment to any specific operating level," she said.

So what, exactly, did Pulliam tell Miller last week?

"There probably was some room in that conversation for miscommunication," Schmitt said delicately. "It sounds like there was a misunderstanding."