Massive runoff reaches Lake Wylie, just upstream of Tega Cay.

It wasn’t the area he’d been pleading to try and protect, but when Don Clarke heard about a massive soil spill into Lake Wylie he hopped in the boat to see it for himself.

“If you look at that picture you can see the mudline on the rocks,” Clarke said a week after the spill, referencing the photo he took from his boat.

“That cove, the amount of water that came into that cove, actually raised the water line six to eight inches before the lake absorbed it. And of course it dumped untold amounts of crud into the back of that cove.”

The Catwaba Riverkeeper Foundation first reported a major sediment spill Aug. 20. It happened near McKee and Bankhead roads in The Palisades. The site is in North Carolina, but sediment dumped into the Torrence Creek cove just across from Tega Cay and parts of York County.

Several people who have seen the site say it was the largest sediment spill they’ve seen in the area. Charlotte code enforcement spent days after the spill working at the site.

“These sites must learn to keep their sediment on their own site,” Catawba Riverkeeper Sam Perkins wrote in an email. “Too much sediment has flowed off too many developments on Lake Wylie.”

At issue is a Mattamy Homes construction site. The company is building Ridgewater there. Mattamy also has six more projects planned, ongoing or completed nearby, including Lake Crest, King’s Grove and King’s Grove Manor in Lake Wylie. Cadance at Tega Cay and Ayrshire in Fort Mill are Mattamy sites, too.

“We are currently in the process of investigating the cause of the incident and are working in full cooperation with the proper authorities and with our sub-contractors to address and remediate the issue,” reads a statement from the company.

From what he observed, Clarke said it looked like a retention pond set up for the construction failed. It looked like it filled up with water and the "whole retention pond failed and let everything go at once," he said.

Resident Andy Burnet lives near the construction site, on the South Carolina side. The recent breech didn’t surprise him. Burnet started taking pictures of sediment control issues 10 months ago, forwarding many of them to Charlotte code enforcement.

“All of this stuff happened in North Carolina, but it’s coming into South Carolina,” Burnet said. “I just got on the phone and started calling anybody I thought could help do things.”

Burnet said even when silt fences are up on site, silt avoids and flows around them due to the layout. Last fall, he said, there were noticeable problems.

“The road then, it was solid red from one side to the other,” Burnet said. “As a neighbor to it, it becomes offensive.”

At one point the 20-year resident couldn’t use his garage for tracking in all the mud his tires picked up from the road, he said. Burnet said McKee is a narrow road already and the shoulder is disappearing due to construction equipment use and runoff. He is concerned not just with the recent breech, but with how much more soil is being disturbed at the North Carolina site.

“What they’ve done now is about half if what they're going to do,” Burnet said.

This story was originally published August 29, 2017 at 1:13 PM with the headline "Massive runoff reaches Lake Wylie, just upstream of Tega Cay.."