Dam repairs after flood delayed in Lee County

More than 10 months after floods in October 2015, the future of Lake Ashwood remains murky.

When the 1,000-year flood damaged the spillway at the lake, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, which leases the property from Lee County School District, and the S.C. National Guard worked to lower the water level in the lake to prevent a breach from causing damage downstream.

"We worked with the National Guard and got some sandbags and equipment and tried to get the water down in the lake," said Ross Self, chief of the Freshwater Fisheries Section at DNR.

As a public entity that incurred costs during the nationally declared emergency, the costs could be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Self said that because the lake is owned by the school district, the district had to incur the costs, so DNR and the National Guard invoiced the school district for the time and material costs incurred in October. When the school district received the money from FEMA, it was sent on to DNR said LCSD Superintendent Wanda Andrews.

"That is what was reimbursed to us," Self said.

He said DNR and the school district are working with the local delegation to the S.C. General Assembly to make some water recreation funds available to contract with an engineer to inspect the dam and develop a plan to repair and restore it.

"I'm hoping we'll see some movement on that before the end of the month," Self said. "That's the first step in the process of trying to put the place back together."

Self said until the engineering and inspection work is done, it would only be a wild guess to estimate the costs to repair Lake Ashwood.

"At that point we will have to identify funds through whatever means can be made available to make those repairs," he said.

He said the reimbursement available from FEMA would be for repairs and not to make improvements or enhancements to the dam.

"Our goal right now is to try to get a handle on trying to repair the dam and be able to re-impound the lake," Ross said.

He said the lake has filled with a lot of sediment, and additional funding would be needed to remove the sediment or deepen the lake.

"We are currently working on a general permit with the Corp of Engineers for lake habitat management across the state," Ross said. "That would apply to public lakes like this, and we may have some options with that permit to do some additional work."

According to the New Deal Preservation Association, the dam was originally built during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration as part of his New Deal program intended to pull the nation out of the Great Depression. Ashwood Plantation was reportedly built by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration as a planned agricultural community with 161 housing units, at a cost of $1.8 million.

"That lake has been there a long time," Self said. "The federal government was putting money into supporting little farm communities, and I think the little school house that was there was built at the same time."

Lee County Manager Allan Watkins said he was told it could be three years before anyone can expect to fish in Lake Ashwood again.

"Even when you put fish in, you have to give them time to grow," he said.