Few people in Mecklenburg County suffered more from Hurricane Helene than residents whose homes border the Catwaba River south of Mountain Island Lake.
Floodwater there covered streets. It gushed into homes and filled backyard out buildings with near ceiling-level brown water. A preliminary assessment found four homes to be total losses, said Paige Grande, a spokesperson for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Emergency Management. People living in about 100 houses were displaced.
Lake Drive resident Erik Jendresen, who’s sued the Duke Energy before over flooding, says the power company shares the blame.
Jendresen lives just downstream of Mountain Island Lake, where water levels were above Duke Energy’s target in the days leading up to Helene’s arrival, according to the company’s website.
Water levels at Lake Norman, just north, were near target levels but above minimums, data show.
Jendresen questioned why the power company didn’t release some water — at Mountain Island Lake and others — in anticipation of the influx of water streaming down from the mountains. Lowering the water levels ahead of time and increasing the lake’s storage capacity would have prevented the lake from sending so much water over the spillway at once, Jendresen said.
A smaller spill means a smaller impact on communities downstream.
“They could have taken steps well in advance to drastically lower levels at all lakes in the 11-lake system to the bare minimum they’re allowed to,” said Jendresen, 64. “There’s a perception that Duke is like the evil empire. They’ve earned it.”
In an email to The Charlotte Observer on Wednesday evening, Ben Williamson, a Duke Energy spokesperson, said all of the company’s lakes were at or below target levels when the hurricane’s flood waters reached them.
He said Lake Norman’s large size makes it difficult to lower the reservoir quickly, since all of the released water must flow through the much smaller Mountain Island Lake.
“Due to the size of Mountain Island Lake and the historic amount of rainfall from this event, any additional storage that would have been created in the lake would not have prevented the flooding associated with the storm,” Williamson wrote to The Observer. “If Duke Energy began aggressively moving water downstream before a reliable or accurate forecast was available, it could have risked the entire region suffering severe water shortages (including drinking water) if the storm missed the region, or dry weather persisted.”
Flood of record
Brandon Jones has been the Catawba Riverkeeper since 2018. He’s never seen the river flood like it did last week. It’s likely no one else has, either.
“This will be the flood of record,” Jones said. “We talk about the great flood of 1916. This is bigger. This has more damage. This is more catastrophic.”
Helene dumped nearly two feet of rain on some parts of western North Carolina. Eighteen inches fell onto part of McDowell County, which sits in the Catawba River basin, according to North Carolina State University.
The river, which changes to the Wateree River in South Carolina, starts in the Blue Ridge Mountains and runs 225 miles through 26 counties across the Carolinas.
Jones said one of the river’s bottlenecks is the Mountain Island Lake dam. Unlike other dams along the Catawba, the one south of Mountain Island Lake doesn’t have flood gates. Water can only move through the dam’s spillway or hydroelectric turbines, Jones said.
“The important thing to remember is Duke is not able to quickly move water through the system,” he said. “They need a long run up time because the reservoirs were not designed for flood control. So when the forecast changes quickly or worsens, they are unable to adjust.”
Jones said Mountain Island Lake’s turbines can move about 10,000 cubic feet of water per second — or about 75,000 gallons per second. He said the influx of water into the lake peaked at about 100,000 cubic feet per second.
“I would expect this to be a 1,000-year flood,” he said. “It’s terrible. And all of these people just recovered from the last flood in 2019.”
Catawba River flooded homes in 2019
In June 2019, after three days of rain, Duke released what was then the largest amount of water ever from Lake Norman. Water poured into more than 100 homes, including many on Lake and Riverside drives near Mountain Island Lake.
The rush of water filled Jendresen’s home with about five feet of the swollen, muddy river.
He and roughly 40 other families sued Duke Energy . They accused the power company of negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress and settled the lawsuit last year.
Jendresen rebuilt after the 2019 flood, but he did so on 12-foot pilings. He told the Observer on Tuesday that his home was eight inches away from flooding again. He said his house was one of only a few on Lake or Riverside drives that wasn’t harmed by the recent surge.
Many weren’t so lucky.
“Nobody got hurt,” he said. “But there’s a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of ruined lives.”
Grande, with Mecklenburg County Emergency Management, said an official assessment of the damage on Lake and Riverside drives will begin Wednesday. The assessment, she said, would take about a week.
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