HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — As fierce as the flash flooding has been in West Virginia in recent days, it would have been far worse without the assistance of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control projects. Dams at Sutton, Summersville, East Lynn, Beech Fork, Burnsville, and Bluestone are all holding a large capacity of flood water today. The release will come as downstream levels allow.
“When those control points have crested and started to fall, that’s when we open the dams to release the excess storage we’ve held back,” said Bryce Carmichael, hydrologist at the Corps’ Huntington District. “We will operate to releases as much as we can without exceeding those control stages at those gauges.”
The control gauges are the lifeline of the flood control plans for each watershed in the southern half of West Virginia. Carmichael assured although there has been significant rainfall, there is still plenty of capacity in each reservoir to handle more water. The increased flood storage forced closure of campgrounds and other recreational facilities this month at Sutton and Summersville, but the primary mission of each dam project is flood control.
Carmichael added however, they can’t control it all. Sometimes the rain falls out of their reach.
“At Sutton over the weekend the event came in and dumped three inches of rain just downstream of the dam,” he said. “Therefore the dam was not able to impound those waters and it went straight into the channel downstream of the dam and caused our gauge at Frametown to spike above flood control stage.”
The Corps releases as much of the stored flood water as possible when the downstream levels crest to make way for more capacity for the next storm.