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Riverkeeper on construction sediment flow in Lake Wylie: ‘Worst case ever'

By Greg Suskin, wsoctv.com
By Greg Suskin, wsoctv.com

LAKE WYLIE, S.C. — David Smith awoke to a strange sound Sunday night.  A neighbor wanted to show him something.

"One of my neighbors heard so much rushing water, they came and banged on my door, woke me up and said, 'You need to come look at your land," Smith said.

They walked behind his home on McKee Road in York County and saw water and debris rushing like a flood into his yard.

"It did a tremendous about of damage," Smith said.

The flood of debris was coming from a new home construction site just off his property near the Palisades community.  Mattamy Homes is developing the Ridgewater neighborhood there.

A retention dam designed to keep sediment out of creeks and the lake burst, and what looks like a mudslide flowed through Smith's yard, but it didn't stop there.

Next door to Smith is Lake Wylie and a small cove with several homes, docks and boats.

"I can't even put the boat in the water.   There's also logs, sticks, debris, branches and are strewn everywhere and will have to be picked up," said Stephen Kelke, who lives on the cove that is filled with sediment.

The cove is now so shallow the muddy bottom is visible.  Logs and tree limbs clog the end of it.  Channel 9 was with Catawba riverkeeper, Sam Perkins, as he saw the damage for the first time on Tuesday. He called it the worst case of sediment flow into a lake he's ever seen.

He said the scene is disturbing  because there was no rain to cause the collapse. It happened during dry conditions.

“We need to see a penalty. We need to see a retrieval of the sediment that left this site," Perkins said.  "This was a problem with the construction of the retention dam."

Sediment runoff from construction sites kills wildlife, hurts property values, makes recreation unsafe and can impact water quality.

There were crews out on Tuesday trying to rebuild the dam.

Mattamy Homes has been fined numerous times for allowing sediment runoff, including at least three times in Gaston County since 2009 and in York County a stop work order was issued in July because of another sediment runoff issue into the lake at another Mattamy community under construction.

York County officials said that order has since been lifted.

Mattamy statement on most recent sediment runoff incident:

"We are currently in the process of investigating the cause of the incident and working in full cooperation with the proper authorities and with our subcontractors to address and remediate the issue. Mattamy and our sub-contractors have crews working 24 hours a day to fix the problem."  

For Smith, it needs to be more than that. He has hired a lawyer, and wants to see everything repaired.

"They need to fix my land. They need to fix Lake Wylie," he said.

Perkins said that cove will have to be dredged if it's going to be restored to what it was before.

Smith said Mattamy had asked to buy about an acre of land behind his home that was damaged by the dam breech.

It's not clear yet how far the repair effort will go, including any dredging work in the cove.

Charlotte city code enforcement is investigating the issue.

The cove is across the state line in York County, but the new subdivision is being built on the Charlotte side of the border.

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