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There are 28 dams in Cherokee County, according to the National Inventory of Dams website, 11 of them are considered highly hazardous and lack a plan of action to improve that status. Considering the deaths and damages we’ve all just witnessed caused by excessive water from Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, that is not a comforting statistic.
In North Carolina, there are a total of 1,533 high-hazard dams. Up to 24.3% of them could pose a threat to nearby residents, according to a national analysis by GetMyBoat.com using October 2023 data from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The public database allows Americans to look up the conditions of more than 90,000 dams.
Unfortunately, there are a growing number of dams in poor and unsatisfactory condition, some of which even have the potential to be life-threatening should they fail. Those dams are considered “high-hazard” in the analysis. If Helene had hit here, those dams could have burst, putting thousands of people and their homes in peril.
Of the 11 high-hazard dams in Cherokee County, eight (72.7%) are marked as potentially dangerous, with five in poor condition, two having the condition withheld and one posing an immediate threat. That’s enough to rank Cherokee as the fourth-worst county for dams in North Carolina. Our neighbors aren’t in much better shape, with Clay County being ranked even worse at No. 3, Swain County coming in at No. 10 and Graham County falling to No. 12.
The local dams labeled with a hazard potential classification that lack an emergency action plan are the Andrews Water Supply Dam, Pied Piper Dam Lower, Upper Tanglewood Dam, Tanglewood Forest Dam Lower, Skomp Dam, Hamby Dam, Mcgarry Dam, Hideaway Mountain Lake Dam, Greenbriar Development LLC Dam, Senecal Dam and Dills Dam. The federally operated Hiwassee Dam and Apalachia Dam could also be in trouble, according to the analysis.
Before we go into a dam panic, remember that about 1 in 10 of the inventory’s dam listings have no condition reported by state agencies. For example, four of the five high-hazard dams in Clay County did not have the condition reported.
“It is likely most of these dams should be listed at not rated, but we will work with the appropriate agencies to verify the information and update the NID accordingly,” Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson Gene Pawlik said.
Also remember that North Carolina agencies have often come to Cherokee County and scared the bejesus out of people, only to leave without much of anything happening. Such was the case in January 2020, when state officials sent a letter to Cherokee County seeking help with draining Tanglewood Lake.
The letter obtained by the Cherokee Scout from the N.C. Division of Energy, Mineral & Land Resources said, “DEMLR considers the unsatisfactory condition of this dam to represent an imminent threat to public safety at this time.” Tanglewood Lake is a manmade reservoir about 30 feet in height with about 100 acre-feet of storage.
At the time, Cherokee County commissioners rightly voted to deny the request to help drain the lake because the county would also have been accepting liability for any issues if government officials were involved. And since state officials split town and haven’t been back since then, it’s seems like they were exaggerating the seriousness of the situation.
Then again, the best time to repair a dam is before it breaks. That means the state and county need to develop a plan to address the concerns at each dam as soon as possible. Protecting our local infrastructure should be of primary importance in the General Assembly.
David Brown is publisher of the Cherokee Scout. You can reach him by phone, 828-837-5122; email, dbrown@cherokeescout.com; or on X @daviddBstroh.
North Carolina, there are a total of 1,533 high-hazard dams.