The recreational vehicle in Vengeance Creek at a 45-degree angle and up to the tire in mud
A blow to the pride of the Tennessee Valley Authority
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
Murphy, N.C., Jan. 29, 2008 – The program now underway by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to draw accurate U.S. floodplain maps places this state in the forefront of better planning for deadly and destructive flooding.
“North Carolina is the only state that has assumed responsibility from FEMA for updating floodplain maps,” according to Mark Stafford of the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program.
Callie Moore, executive director of the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition explains: “FEMA is only able to produce 2-3 new floodplain maps per state per year and their schedule often gets redirected after large storm events in order to prioritize more flood-prone areas across the nation. But, floodplain boundaries change (get wider and narrower) based on development and other human activities that alter the hydrology of a drainage area and it’s critically important that we know where the most susceptible areas in our communities are.”
“After Hurricane Katrina inundated most of the eastern half of the state, much of which wasn’t shown on existing maps to be located in the 100-year floodplain, North Carolina adopted legislation to re-map the whole state.” Ms. Moore added that the state was working its way east to west with the new floodplain maps but prior to the remnants of Hurricane Ivan reaching into western North Carolina in 2004; it wasn’t looking good for communities here to receive their fair share of that funding.
Silas Allen, as floodplain and watershed administrator in Cherokee County, is one of the leading proponents of smarter land development in this county. He also serves on the coalition’s board of directors. Allen is a middle-aged man of military bearing who appears to have been born into this world wearing a pair of blue jeans and a friendly yet cautious smile. He has waited a long time, since starting to work for the county in 1992, to have the tools he’s been given by FEMA’s partner in this work, the N.C. Floodplain Mapping Program.
“This is a dream for me, to have it all digitized to where I can go in and look at it and use it to deal with the persons in each community,” Allen told me this morning.
Eighty-six new Flood Insurance Rate Maps, or FIRMs, have been drafted for the 497 square miles of Cherokee County. They’re digital and you can pull them up on a computer screen. They have a lot more science in them than the old maps, which you had to fold out on a table. The FIRMs are undergoing review by engineers, and you. If you have (a) a lot of patience, (b) a high-speed Internet connection and (c) enough technical know-how to be like the professionals and click around on a web site more complex than most, you can study these 86 maps at www.ncfloodmaps.com
A FIRM is a snapshot of each of the rivers and creeks, their size, extent of drainage area, and their potential for flooding and causing havoc. The Special Flood Hazard Area of each waterway is important. Once it has been agreed on by Washington, Raleigh, the insurance industry and you, there’s no further option; minimum standards of quality must be maintained if a county, city or Indian reservation is to qualify in this federal program.
At his computer in the little storefront office on Valley River Avenue here that used to be Richard Howell’s Market, and on the laptop he takes with him as he moves around to building sites in Cherokee County, Silas Allen has downloading speed and the acumen to pull up an address and know immediately what flood control “zone” it lies in, and therefore what the homeowner’s likely annual insurance premium will be.
A “Zone X” structure high above the water might incur a premium of $720. Or a blessed footnote at the bottom of one slide in Mark Stafford’s PowerPoint show has better news. A structure that has not had previous flood claims or received previous federal disaster assistance payments might qualify for a premium as low as $233. A “Zone AE” dwelling nearer the water could incur an annual premium of $991. These premiums will be six to 10 percent higher in U.S. counties that don’t quality for the FEMA program.
I asked, “Should homeowners want to have flood insurance?”
“Smart people have insurance, especially if they’re down on the river,” Silas Allen said. “Lenders will not consider [making a loan for] a property without flood insurance.”
Another point he made is that prior to completion of the updated maps: “If you had six acres down on the river and you wanted to sell it, you would have to hire a floodplain engineer. There have been 36 cases where this has happened in Cherokee County. Those persons have paid from $6,000 to $40,000 [to have the floodplain boundaries determined for them].”
The updated FIRMs aren’t maps that could “change the floodplain,” as a local newspaper headline attested.
“I’ll have someone come up and tell me, ‘I used to not be in the floodplain, and now you’re telling me I am,’” Silas Allen said. “I answer them by saying, ‘No, it hasn’t changed. I’ve just gone in and drawn the line. It was always there.’ ”
Once it is FIRMed up, Cherokee County will be one of the few U.S. areas so far to qualify for lower insurance rates. The VA, FHA, HUD, EPA and Small Business Administration now could approve loans and grants. In addition, state and federal disaster assistance would become available for flood-damaged structures.
The worst Cherokee County flooding in Silas Allen’s memory occurred sometime during the storms of 2004, including Hurricane Ivan that rejuvenated the state’s interest in completing the state-wide floodplain re-mapping. These storms had great power and tore all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the Appalachians and beyond.
“There were nine inches of rain in a 12-hour period,” Allen recalled. “It produced flooding in the Valley, Nottely and Hiwassee rivers. Bridges were washed out, cattle and farm equipment [was] destroyed.”
A CORK BULLETIN BOARD on the wall outside Allen’s office seems innocuous enough. Pinned to it is a 1993 photo of a recreation vehicle that met a cruel fate. It is down in the creek-bed where Vengeance Creek flows into the Valley River, along U.S. 74 in the great valley lying between the towns of Murphy and Andrews. This RV that once rolled happily along the roadways of this vacationland is, in the photograph, canted rakishly at a 45-degree angle and buried up to the tires in mud.
“I was new in this position and I couldn’t push my weight around,” Allen recalled. “I told that man ‘No.’ but he went ahead anyway and parked his RV where he did by Vengeance Creek. It had to be hauled out of the river later. As a result of that happening, I can control what happens now on that site.”
AS WE WRAPPED UP our interview, Allen was preparing to drive to a meeting in Asheville about floodplains. There he was going to take issue with a surprising sentence about Cherokee County that is in the official document guiding the flood insurance work here.
Murphy is in the Hiwassee River watershed. The Hiwassee is a tributary of the Tennessee River. Here the federal Tennessee Valley Authority carried out enthusiastic damming seven decades ago. Why? Well, to get an answer to that question you can go to the 1936-40 Hiwassee dam, 1941-42 Nottely and Chatuge dams, and 1941-43 Apalachia dam. Atop them all have been erected, with no small effort, great iron plaques weighing perhaps a ton apiece. These have inscriptions on them. They solemnly describe how the dams were built to bring jobs, electricity, and a better way of life to the Tennessee Valley, and most importantly – to achieve flood control. This is an abiding tenet of Southern history. It also in intoned in a thousand press releases, in hardcover books, and on the TVA web site.
Additionally, on February 2, 1989, Cherokee County adopted the Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance that Silas Allen has worked these many years to uphold.
However, it appears certain that federal and state bureaucrats now updating flood insurance rate maps have never traveled to view the great iron plaques, never read those press releases, and never gone to those websites.
“If you look at the flood insurance report from North Carolina, they indicate that to their knowledge there is no flood protection in place in Cherokee County,” Silas Allen told me. “We should get credit for that.”
UNTIL CONGRESS PASSED and President Johnson signed the Flood Insurance Act of 1968, disaster relief in the U.S. was both inadequate and expensive. “The private insurance industry could not sell affordable flood insurance because only those at high risk would buy it,” according to the online course of the National Flood Insurance Program.
The cities of Andrews and Murphy joined the flood-control program in 1975; the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in 1977; and Cherokee County joined in 1979, according to Mark Stafford of the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program. Silas Allen chaired four 2005 “scoping meetings” at which 28 miles of streams here in the counties were targeted for detailed studies. “Limited Detail” studies were conducted on another 126 miles of stream. The western part of the county was chosen for most of the studies, he told me, because “streams there are susceptible to flooding, and there has been a lot of development.”
Although the effective date for the new maps has not yet been set, they are accessible in the county mapping office and online at http://www.ncfloodmaps.com. Mark Stafford, Outreach Planner for the NC Floodplain Mapping Program can be reached at mstafford@ncem.org or (919) 715-5711×117.
Tom Bennett of the Martins Creek community near Murphy, N.C., was a retired newsman, Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition member/volunteer/donor and recipient of the 2015 Holman Water Quality Stewardship Award. Tom died on December 28, 2020.