As Chester County dam owners work on repairs, DHEC clears one site of ‘emergency’ order

The list of dams in Chester County in need of immediate repairs has dropped from three to two, according to state officials, and the owners of both are cooperating with the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control to prevent potential flooding.

Contractors are helping the owner of the Loblolly Timber Dam pump water. The dam, just north of the city of Chester, was cited in a DHEC “emergency order” as needing repairs last month.

The water level will need to be lowered first for further inspection and subsequent dam repairs, officials say.

A dam on the lake in Chester State Park also will soon see repairs. There, DHEC inspectors flagged a maintenance issue on the spillway of the dam that creates a 160-acre recreational lake in the state park, just south of the Chester city limits.

The pending repairs to dams in Chester County are part of a statewide effort to reduce flooding risks.

Inspectors have visited 652 dam sites across South Carolina over recent weeks. The large-scale assessment was prompted by historic flooding in Columbia in October – a deadly disaster, likely exacerbated by 17 dam failures in Richland County. Of those, 15 are subject to DHEC regulations.

In total, 36 dams, including four not regulated by DHEC, failed across 10 counties.

State officials have said 14 people were killed in flood-related incidents, and agencies have estimated at least $1 billion in damage.

A week after the flooding, The State newspaper in Columbia reported most of the dams that broke in Richland County last month had been cited repeatedly by DHEC for safety issues. The problems included erosion, cracks and overgrowth preventing proper inspection.

DHEC employees have since issued 75 emergency orders to dam owners in South Carolina, calling for immediate infrastructure repairs to limit future risks. In Chester County last month, there were three locally owned dams on DHEC’s emergency order list.

This week, officials said one of the dams has been removed from the list and is not in need of repair. The Evergreen Timberland Co. Dam owner was issued an emergency order in error, said Jennifer Read, DHEC’s chief communications officer.

The Evergreen Timberland dam is located on Three Mile Branch, a stream near Chester State Park.

State park officials have previously told The Herald they were already aware of the spillway maintenance need on the lake dam. Currently, workers are draining the reservoir, with the lake level dropping about one inch per day, according to DHEC records.

The dam and the spillway structure will be reinspected after the water is low enough, sometime next week, records show.

No dams in York and Lancaster counties have been cited by DHEC as having problems during the statewide inspection process, according to state records.

DHEC partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to perform the recent inspections.

This story was originally published November 4, 2015 at 9:07 PM with the headline "As Chester County dam owners work on repairs, DHEC clears one site of ‘emergency’ order."