Some residents of the Laurel Fork community in Carroll County are calling on state and local officials to take action in the wake of intense floods that damaged their homes on the night of Aug. 2.
The residents allege that the flooding, which caused what they estimate to be hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage across at least 20 properties, was intensified by the breach of a dam owned by a golf club upstream.
Malcolm Smith, 71, lives just outside the floodplain along Big Reed Island Creek. He is used to intense rains every now and again, typically 8 or 9 inches. But on the night of Aug. 2, Smith came home to flooding above his 7-foot fence.
By the morning, Smith said his property was “trashed” with mud and debris. His barbed wire fence was torn up, and his gate was missing. Four feet of water filled his barn and damaged everything inside, including his farming tools, tractor, e-bike, cider press and a stage he uses for folk music shows. Golf balls, logs and pieces of buildings that did not belong to him covered his yard.
Smith estimates repairing everything will cost him over $50,000.
“And I realized these golf balls didn’t just come from nowhere, they came out of that dam,” Smith said.
Two days later, an engineer with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation observed that the man-made lake on the nearby Olde Mill Golf Resort — which has a normal pool volume close to 300 acre-feet, or 97 million gallons — was almost completely drained, according to a letter from the department to the resort’s owner, Norris Mitchell.
“The primary spillway pipe for Olde Mill Golf Club Dam failed, creating a scour hole around the riser structure and resulting in significant sediment loss,” the letter read. “The Olde Mill Golf Club Dam has a preliminary hazard classification of high, indicating it would be a threat to downstream lives or property if the dam breached.”
Prior to the disaster, the Olde Mill Golf Club Dam had already been out of compliance with the state for two decades. State regulations require dam owners to submit the following to DCR:
- A one-time dam breach inundation study with inundation maps, which must be redone if the dam is altered or there is development downstream that could be impacted by a dam breach.
- An emergency action plan for every six years, which must be forwarded by DCR to the city or county in which the dam is located.
- An annual inspection.
Neither DCR nor Carroll County has received any of the required documents from Olde Mill since 2006, according to Andrea Henry, the chief engineer for the department’s Division of Dam Safety. Olde Mill’s last emergency action plan expired in 2012.
DCR requested Olde Mill to submit a new safety inspection, divert water around the breach and permanently fix the spillway, according to the best engineering practices, according to Henry. The owners have begun doing so, and were working on dewatering the site as of Thursday.
But Smith is not satisfied. His property is still damaged. He is still out tens of thousands of dollars — and is uninsured for floods. He said he has yet to hear back from Olde Mill about his complaints.
Representatives of Olde Mill declined multiple requests to comment for this story over the phone and by email.
“All I want is a neighbor,” Smith said. “I don’t want to get into lawsuits. I don’t want to make this a huge thing. All I want is them to do what’s right. If I destroyed or hurt a neighbor’s property in any way, I’m the kind of man who would go over and take care of it, and that’s all I want them to do.”
Smith also expressed frustration with Carroll County officials, who told him the county was not the enforcement agency responsible for the matter, he said. County officials referred him to DCR.
Smith wants to know why neither Olde Mill nor Carroll County alerted him and his neighbors about the incident as it was happening, which would have allowed them to move their equipment and livestock to higher ground before the floods became too intense.
Carroll County Administrator Mike Watson told Cardinal News Monday that the county did not release a typical alert about the flooding because local officials did not receive any calls as the incident was happening during the night. They did not become aware of the incident until after it was over.
Watson said county staff have been in contact with DCR regarding the incident. They have not contacted Olde Mill because they do not have the authority to do so, he said.
Watson confirmed that Carroll County does not have a copy of Olde Mill’s emergency action plan. He said he did not know why that is the case.
Smith believes he suffered less damage compared to some other residents. He said two of his neighbors, who have been living there for over 80 years, said they had never seen the water rise so high.
Smith has since created a petition demanding a public hearing from Carroll County on the incident. It has over 55 signatures so far, he said.
James Cornicelli, 56, another of Smith’s neighbors, found scattered debris and immense damage to his property. All of his crops, including corn, tomatoes, beans, radishes, potatoes and cucumbers, were flooded, and his horse barn was cracked and covered in dirt. He estimates it will take over $150,000 to undo the damage, not counting his “time, effort and suffering.”
“That water is pretty powerful,” Cornicelli said. “It ripped up my deck, ripped up all my trees that we had just planted. It filled my barn with about 4 feet of water. It filled the underneath of my house, ruined my HVAC system completely.”
The whole disaster has made Cornicelli feel “dejected.”
“If this is a risk that could have been averted, and if somebody is responsible for it, they should take responsibility for that,” Cornicelli said.
