It’s been several days since rain has fallen in central North Carolina, but Jordan Lake continues to rise.
“The dam is flowing very minimally,” said Chief Deputy Steve Maynor with the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office. “It causes the lake levels to rise drastically like what you see right now.”
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All of which, is going exactly according to plan.
“Jordan Lake was designed to protect communities further downstream,” Maynor said. “Jordan Lake is doing its job, and it’s protecting our communities further down south.”
The body of a missing boater was located Tuesday morning during a search at Jordan Lake in Chatham County. Crews will return to the lake Wednesday to search for the second boater, who is still missing.
The lake is about 229 feet above sea level. That’s roughly 13 feet above its ideal depth.
The Army Corps of Engineers cut the dam’s release by more than half because of this storm. Regularly, about 500 to 700 cubic feet of water is released per second. Right now, that’s about 200 cubic feet per second.
“It’s a drop in the bucket honestly,” said Dana Matics, Army Corps of Engineers Assistant Operations Project Manager. “We hold back any water that falls into Jordan Lake so we can hold back floodwaters and reduce the risk of flooding downstream which is exactly what we did this time."
All of the water piling up in Jordan Lake is preventing places like Lillington or Fayetteville from a rush of water devastating those areas along the Cape Fear River.
“As those creeks, streams and rivers fill up, we’re the bathtub for a lot of those like the Haw River,” Matics said. “The dam is like the stopper in the bathtub. We’ve effectively stopped it up.”
The maximum capacity for Jordan Lake is about 240 feet above sea level. Matics said the record is 233 feet.
But like any bathtub, it’s got to drain at some point.
Over the next few days, the Army Corps of Engineers will do a controlled release of the water at the dam. At its peak, about 10,000 cubic feet of water will be released downstream per second. That’s the equivalent of roughly 75,000 gallons of water a second — a coordinated, and safe, way to drain the excess water.
“It’s an enormous amount of water,” Matics said. “But the river and the channel and what’s below us can handle it.”
The release of water is something they will monitor closely.
With upcoming storms, they don’t want to release too much water. It could have devastating impacts if a storm shifts at the last moment to an area where more water was released. It’s the same reason they don’t drain water from the lakes in anticipation of a storm.
“We don’t do that because any slug of water we send downstream, if that storm shifts, we have now added to flooding instead of helping prevent it,” Matics said. “It’s much easier and better to deal with the rain once it falls.”
At its peak, with 10,000 cubic feet of water being released a second, it will still take about a day for the lake level to go down one foot. So it could very well be two weeks before Jordan Lake is back to its normal depth.
“It’s a science, but a hard science to dial in because of all the unknowns,” Matics said. “Weather doesn’t play nice and sometimes it doesn’t always give us what we want or what we need.”
But the debris in the lake is still cause for concern. Garbage, tree trunks and other debris coats the shoreline.
“For as many years as I’ve been on Jordan Lake, even growing up, I’ve never seen the debris and the walls we’ve seen coming across the lake like this time,” Maynor said. “It’ll take several days for this debris to wash out to the shores and sink to the bottom of the lake floor.”
All of that debris has raised concerns about water quality. Jordan Lake provides water for Cary. According to the town, its pump stations were sandbagged as per their high lake protocols. The pump stations and water treatment plant are not experiencing any operational impacts and do not expect to have any additional impacts according to the current forecasts.
Matics urges the community to continue being cautious as the lake drops and boat ramps soon reopen.
“Go slower than you normally would and keep a lookout for debris," Matics said. "It will continue to be a navigational hazard."
"It's hard to get back in your canoe or your kayak if you fall in some of this trash, so it's concerning for the safety of the folks who want to utilize Jordan Lake for what it was designed for - the recreational side of it," Maynor added.
Maynor said people should avoid the shore areas that are not maintained by state parks.
"They have steep drop-off points. There’s obstacles under the water, and right now, you’re swimming above trees if you’re in those shorelines," Maynor said. "We urge you if you’re gonna be in the water, wear your life jacket. If you can’t see the bottom, you need to be in a life jacket.”
The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Division of Water Resources is also tracking impacts from Tropical Storm Chantal to wastewater treatment operations and collection systems that transport wastewater and public water systems. You can track reported discharges of untreated wastewater into the waterways at its website.