LAKE LURE, N.C. — Ashley Hannon and her husband, Joe, are collecting food, clothing, and toiletries at his family’s church, just one mile away from the Lake Lure Dam.
These people say they relied on the dam to protect their homes during Hurricane Helene. The town says more than 22 inches of rain fell onto the surrounding land in just four days. The water trickled into Lake Lure and then flowed over the dam, causing catastrophic flooding below.
“We’re all like trying to stand strong because we’re like, this is the worst thing we’ve ever had happen,” Hannon said. “We’ve had the dam be at high waters before, and they honestly, nobody knew really what was going on.”
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The Lake Lure Dam didn’t fail -- crews lowered the water level by four feet ahead of Helene. But the town says the water still overtopped -- UNC Charlotte engineering professor Dr. Glenn Moglen says that could have made the damage much worse.
“One danger when water, when your dam overtops, is it can actually contribute to an actual failure, depending on the materials of the dam,” Moglen told Channel 9.
Records from the Department of Environmental Quality show the dam is “high hazard,” and needed repairs when Hurricane Helene hit.
Dams are classified as high, significant, or low hazard. It’s based on expected downstream damage if a dam were to fail. They’re also assessed by the severity of safety deficiencies, either satisfactory, poor, or unsatisfactory.
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North Carolina has more than 3,500 dams, and according to the National Inventory of Dams, more than 200 high hazard dams are in poor or unsatisfactory condition. That’s the most of any state in the U.S.
“It’s important that they go out there and they inspect all these dams that had high water level,” said John Moyle with the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Moyle says many aging dams don’t meet current design requirements.
North Carolina’s average dam is 64 years old. Moyle warned that a breach could lead to extensive property loss, or the loss of lives.
“When we say a dam is a high hazard, you know that means one loss of life, all right. But when you have large water supply reservoirs, or, you know, power generating facilities that impound thousands of acres of water, you know, then you may have impacts that result in hundreds,” Moyle said.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper requested federal funding earlier this month for Helene recovery. The state Department of Environmental Quality wants to use $420 million to repair high hazard dams. Cooper’s office plans to apply for another $11 million to strengthen N.C.’s dams.
“Unfortunately, it takes catastrophic events like this to make them realize that a funding mechanism is needed beyond, you know, the small amount of money that FEMA has right now to fix those dams,” Moyle said.
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“Anybody who owns a car knows that you don’t necessarily change the oil at 5,000 miles but if you want to see how far you can go with that, pretty sure you’ve got a car that doesn’t work. So aging infrastructure is the same thing,” said Moglen.
Hannon says she’s met dozens of people who lost everything after Lake Lure overflowed into their communities. She and her neighbors want lawmakers to prioritize North Carolina’s aging infrastructure. She says they plan to start with local leaders.
“I think a lot of people in this community are going to have to start going with council and make sure that what we voted for, who’s in office, that we’re actually at the meetings making sure we know exactly what’s going on,” Hannon said.
We reached out to all five Lake Lure Council members, and locally based members of the North Carolina Agriculture, Energy, and Environment Committee for their thoughts on the report. We’re still waiting for their response.
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