By Stephen Smoot
From the end of the 19th through the first quarter of the 20th century, timber companies relentlessly chopped down as many trees as their numbers of men and machinery would allow. Eventually, only a few stands of original virgin timber remained in spots as scattered as the Vanderbilt preserve in western North Carolina or Cathedral State Park in Preston County.
According to Ronald Lewis, professor emeritus at West Virginia University, in his book “Transforming the Appalachian Countryside,” the state board of agriculture reported in 1900 that the spruce forest alone in West Virginia had dwindled from 1.5 million acres to less than 225,000 acres due to the removal of both the valuable mature timber, as well as less useful saplings, in the clear cutting process.
He added that “several companies operated on Spruce Knob, removing the timber from 30 to 50 acres each day . . . the wasteful methods employed by the companies of clear-cutting everything in their path without regard to size turned Spruce Knob into a desolate place.”
In 1908, AB Brooks, director of the West Virginia Geological Survey, reported damage created in the cut over Spruce Knob countryside by machinery sparking fires in the dead underbrush. Erosion also took its toll, as the state board of agriculture stated in 1900 that on the iconic mountain, there was “not enough soil in a square rod to meet the ordinary requirements of a hill of corn.”
Lewis then described the inevitable result of the loss of trees through cutting, loss of other vegetation through fire, and the loss of soil through erosion – a rapid increase in the number and scope of large destructive floods. “With the forests removed,” he wrote, “so too were the natural controls on water flow.”
When cycles of high precipitation hit in the following decades, floods devastated both farms and communities in areas most directly affected by the clear-cutting of Appalachian timber. Today, modern timber cutting practices carefully preserve the integrity of the forest, resulting in West Virginia annually growing twice as many trees as are lost through timbering or natural attrition, but awareness of the need for this did not take place until the 1930s.
The new awareness came too late. Only after decades could the forestlands in West Virginia and across the Appalachian region see a recovery of both their size and their ability to mitigate heavy precipitation and limit flooding.
The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Depression-era seizure of farmland for use in building dams for hydroelectric power and flood control required a near-tyrannical cost, but did prove that a network of dams could reduce the impacts of flooding in the mountains and Appalachian Plateau hills and hollows.
In 1944, Congress passed the Flood Control Act, followed by the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act of 1954.
This federal legislation empowered the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service to enact a series of programs to reduce or prevent the impacts of heavy precipitation and flooding. One provided for the construction of hundreds of small watershed flood control dams.
According to Gene Sauerborn from the West Virginia Conservation Agency, “building started in the 50s, then hit their stride in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.” The peak of construction nationwide took place between 1963 and 1966. He emphasized that this particular program aimed at creating structures to trap excess water on tributaries well upstream of where they empty into larger streams and rivers. They serve as part of “a cumulative holding back of waters.”
He adds that 112 of these by the end of this year “will be at the end of their evaluated life.”
West Virginia has 170 small watershed flood control dams constructed statewide. The Potomac Valley Conservation District, encompassing the counties of the South Branch watershed, has 73, or just under 43 percent.
State and local officials are responsible for regular maintenance. According to a typical operation and maintenance agreement signed in 1964, the Soil Conservation Service (now NRCS) provides technical assistance while the conservation district (the agreement now includes both the local district and WVCA) will prevent any changes that would interfere with the proper function of the dam and serve as sponsors.
Expenses incurred under the operations and management agreement came in at just under $300,000 in 2010, but topped $1 million in both 2014 and 2021. Sauerborn noted that state and local authorities are now responsible for repairs short of dam rehabilitation. Rehabilitation means the replacement of the structure or the bringing of it up to modern engineering standards, which can cost an average of between $8 and 12 million. The need for rehabilitation, however, does not necessarily indicate an emergent danger of failure.
Four dams in the Potomac Valley Conservation District are currently under rehabilitation, all in Mineral and Grant counties. Funding has been requested for six more.
State and local conservation officials, fortunately, have diligently performed proper maintenance on these dams built of earth, concrete, or a combination of both. Sauerborn says, “Most as a whole are in pretty good shape.”
A major issue, however, lies in the growth of population and development around and even beneath these dams. New Creek Dam site number one in Mineral County, for example, was constructed prior to that of a Keyser neighborhood located not only beneath the dam, but also in its spillway. A WVCA map lays out plans for roadblocks and evacuation centers that would have to accommodate hundreds currently living in the path of the spillway and also on New Creek downstream.
In many ways, the dams help to pay for themselves even beyond the tremendous benefits of flood prevention. According to the West Virginia Conservation Agency, between 2014 and 2023, NRCS “quantified more than $9.1 million in average annual benefits to areas surrounding the 73 Potomac Valley dams. The lakes and ponds created behind the dams provide areas for water supply, irrigation, erosion prevention, livestock watering, and also adding value to wildlife habitats.”
While many are entirely on private property, some are open to the public. New Creek Dam Site # 14 in Grant County, only a few miles from the Scherr interchange on Corridor H, is large enough to offer fishing and boating opportunities in a beautiful mountain setting.
