CAIRO — The Grady County Board of Commissioners says an unknown individual is spreading faulty information regarding Tired Creek Lake through a false social media account.

County clerk John White said at last week’s commission meeting that an unsanctioned “alternate” page on Facebook has been posting information, sometimes erroneous, under the guise of being a legitimate county-run account.

“We get calls about it all the time in the office,” White said. “People are kind of upset, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”

On at least one occasion, a resident called to complain that he was not allowed to camp at the lake after being falsely informed that such activity was permitted.

County Administrator Buddy Johnson said the county submitted a complaint with Facebook to remove the page, but to no avail.

The unsanctioned page, titled “TIRED CREEK LAKE” in all-caps, appears as if it is a legitimate county social media page and had just under 900 followers at press time. The page features a link to the county’s authentic Tired Creek Lake website and a phone number that connects to the county commissioner’s office.

“They’ve gone through great, great measures to make it,” White said. “Some things are good on it and some things are not.”

While acknowledging that most information posted on the unsanctioned page is generally correct, Johnson said some responses to the public’s questions on the page are not as tactful as the country government would choose to represent itself.

“There was a complaint there about the cost and somebody responded back through the site saying, ‘then don’t come,'” Johnson said. “We would never respond that way.”

Lake director Mike Binion said he and other county officials have no idea who is running the fake page. 

Binion has had limited correspondence with the page’s owner, in one case sending a private message asking the unknown individual to correct false information which had been posted. The faulty post was corrected within an hour, and Binion provided the page owner his cellphone number to communicate further but never heard back.

The authentic county-run Tired Creek Lake Facebook page’s title is spelled correctly and has more than 4,000 likes, though it does not have any public posts yet this year.