LAKE WYLIE, S.C. — David Smith looks at the acre of woods on Lake Wylie behind his home and doesn't mince words.
[PAST COVERAGE: Riverkeeper on construction sediment flow in Lake Wylie: ‘Worst case ever']
"All this land is just ruined,” Smith said. “It's destroyed."
On Aug. 21, a construction dam surrounding a retention pond collapsed. There was no rain storm and it's still not clear why it happened. The breach poured thousands of tons of sediment onto Smith's property. It covered up trees, brush and wildlife under two to three feet of sand and debris.
"It all needs to be torn out and redone, trees planted," Smith said.
Mattamy Homes is building the Ridgewater subdivision on McKee Road near the Pallisades community. It was their dam used to collect water onsite during construction. The builder has called the breach "an unfortunate incident we deeply regret and have apologized for."
Mattamy has done emergency repairs to the dam, but still doesn't know what caused the collapse.
“The recent failure of the earth dam in Mattamy's Ridgewater community, and the resulting flow of water and sediment from our property, was an unfortunate accident that we deeply regret and apologize for,” Mattamy officials said in a news release on Tuesday. “Since the time of the accident, our staff, as well as contractors and partners, have been working as hard as possible to repair and clean up the damage, with resolution of this matter as their top priority. I wanted to provide an update on these efforts, in the spirit of transparency.
While it's important to discover the cause of the break, the repair and clean-up has been the immediate focus. We are still in the process of inspecting the original dam construction to determine why this happened. We are working closely with all the proper authorities to find the cause. While this is under investigation, our contractor is operating a pump 24 hours a day to keep the water level in the pond down. The water is being pumped into an approved silt collection bag that removes sediment prior to discharging the rainwater downstream.
We have cleaned up the sediment on our land downstream past the dam after having a consultant prepare a remediation plan, which had to be (and was) approved by the city.
We have been making every effort to implement clean-up activities on land outside our property. Because these lands are owned by private property owners, we require the permission of the land owners to enter. All land owners have been notified that we are seeking permission to enter, and we have also followed up with personal visits and e-mails. It took a week to get this permission from most owners, and work on their properties commenced thereafter. However, one land owner (where the majority of the offsite sediment deposit is located) is refusing to allow clean-up on his property. We will continue efforts to seek his permission to enter his land and remove the sediment.
We have installed a temporary silt curtain at the headwaters of the downstream cove to stop any further siltation of the cove.”
An environmental consultant has completed core sampling of the cove, and three of the core samples indicate sediment from the dam breach in the stream channel and upland areas. Within the cove delta and the cove itself, the core samples do not indicate sediment deposits from the dam breach.
Catawba riverkeeper Sam Perkins disputes those tests that show no run off issues in the cove. He said the tests were not done correctly.
"Coring was performed closer to where the blowout occurred. It was not performed out in the cove itself. What was looked at, was really what happened in the land right before you reach the cove," Perkins said.
Smith is the landowner who won't give Mattamy permission to access his property and begin the cleanup. He told Channel 9 that experts told him the sediment will kill all the trees anyway. He doesn't think a cleanup will help now.
"Whatever they do, it won't be enough," Smith said. "Just seeing the ability they have of building a dam at a lake, and we know how that went."
Perkins said that three weeks after the dam collapse no one really knows how bad the threat to the environment really is.
"I hoped we'd have some answers by now," Smith said.
Former Mecklenburg County erosion control director Fred Gore told Channel 9 that Smith hired him as a consultant, and he's been to look at the spill and the property around it.
"They've got a big problem down there. A big problem," Gore said.
Looking at the spill, Gore said there's enough sediment to fill about 230 dump trucks. Most of it poured into Smith's backyard and some into the lake.
"If this isn't cleaned up, it's all going to be in the lake eventually," he said.
Smith is asking Mattamy to buy the acre of land that was damaged behind his home. He doesn't believe there's any other answer.
"Once the builders finish building the houses and two years down the line they leave, I don't want to be responsible for that dam, because it's coming into my land," he said.
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