This is a guest opinion by Raleigh communication consultant Matthew Eisley,
ASHEVILLE – After Hurricane Helene dealt a devastating blow last fall to Asheville and western North Carolina, pundits were quick to blame the record flooding on “development interests and political resistance to new regulations,” declaring that “nothing could have mitigated the impact of the tropical storm” and that “no amount of precaution could have avoided the destruction that followed.”
But that’s wrong.
For starters, Asheville’s leaders have a long and astonishing record of neglecting the city’s water and sewer systems, which failed spectacularly when Helene’s floodwaters overwhelmed them. Broken pipes, brown taps, and leak losses of more than a quarter of the city’s water supply had become routine for years before Helene’s surge blew the system apart.
The city whose motto is “Quality of Service, Quality of Life” took months to restore full water supplies. It’s true that nothing could have prevented all the flood’s damage. But more robust stormwater controls, smarter land use, and sturdier water and sewer systems would have helped.
What’s more, going back half a century, grassroots opposition to a network of proposed flood-control reservoirs throughout the French Broad River basin served tragically to make future floods worse than they otherwise would have been, including Helene’s $53 billion catastrophe.
If the reservoir opponents hadn’t prevailed, the hurricane’s widespread damage to the region’s roads, water lines, sewer plants, power systems, schools, homes, and businesses would have been less severe. How much so, apparently no one has determined. But western North Carolina’s missing lakes would have made a difference. And not just with Helene, but also with the lesser floods that occur almost every year.
Local leaders’ neglect
The city of Asheville’s willful neglect is hard to fathom. After all, a similar flood famously struck the area in 1916. “100 years after the Flood of 1916, the City of Asheville is ready for the next one,” the city’s own website crowed in 2016.
When twin tropical storms Ivan and Frances struck in 2004, flooding Asheville again and killing 11 people, “it served as a sobering reminder of what can happen, even today,” as the city later said. “About every 20 years we have a major flooding event,” its website noted. “We know that climate change can bring more frequent and stronger weather events. The floods will come.”
When they hit, the city assured its residents, its modest flood-control system, mobile phone warnings and computer alerts will “greatly lessens the risk of a catastrophic loss of life.”
Eight years later, amid record rainfall, Helene killed at least 104 people across western North Carolina. Asheville was not, in fact, ready for the next one.
In reality, Asheville hasn’t done nearly enough to control the floods that devastate it periodically. The city has promoted redevelopment throughout its notorious floodplains along the Swannanoa and French Broad rivers. And its twin reservoirs are designed to collect drinking water, but not to capture floodwater.
The ‘dam fighters’
Ironically, Helene’s widespread environmental damage was thanks in part to well-meaning environmentalists and local property owners who blocked the proposed flood-control lakes.
In 1966, two years after yet another flood had inundated Asheville and other cities in the French Broad River watershed, the federal Tennessee Valley Authority recommended building 14 flood-control reservoirs throughout the basin’s four counties: Buncombe, Henderson, Madison, and Transylvania. Plus a levee to protect low-lying parts of Asheville.
The TVA, which had brought stability and prosperity to much of impoverished southern Appalachia, said its French Broad reservoir plan would boost the regional economy while providing “significant flood-control benefits, as well as benefits from water supply, water-quality control, recreation, shoreline development, fishing, and area redevelopment.”
The proposal had strong local backers. But over the next several years, environmentalists, affected property owners, and a few powerful politicians (including future Congressman Charles Taylor) slowed and then in 1972 finally killed the TVA’s proposal. Opposition coalesced in many of the same communities Helene later ravaged, from Brevard to Mills River to Swannanoa.
As with any important choice, the TVA plan involved significant trade-offs. If the reservoirs had been built, farmland would have been lost and homeowners paid for their property would have had to move, the same as with almost every lake we enjoy today. They’re not cheap to build.
When the plan collapsed, the grassroots “dam fighters” celebrated their victory, saying it was “in the best interest of the community.” None foresaw the calamitous economic and social costs that would pile up time and again for lack of the lakes: lives lost, homes destroyed, businesses ruined, water supplies crippled, and raw sewage, poisonous chemicals, and hazardous debris befouling the region’s rivers.
It’s not too late
The result has been not broadly beneficial ecological protection, but instead repeated, widespread environmental devastation. The needs of the voiceless many fell to the interests of the vocal few – and the public keeps paying an increasingly heavy price to clean up and rebuild.
Today’s climate experts who study storm resilience emphasize the importance of managing runoff. As local, state, and federal officials decide how to recover after Helene, they should consider reviving the TVA’s discarded flood-control plan.
More and bigger storms are coming as the atmosphere warms. We’ve just received a crushing reminder of the serious, life-threatening risks of complacency in The Land of the Sky.
It’s not too late to build our missing mountain lakes before the next flood drowns the region and taxpayers are obliged once again to resuscitate it. Short-sighted opposition be damned.
Eisley is a former North Carolina journalist who has been a communication manager and consultant for 15 years. He’s a native of Statesville and a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill.