Two months after the first floor of their home beside Mountain Island Lake was filled with 4 feet of floodwaters, Robert and Linda Brown’s floor is still covered with a layer of mud, half an inch thick and cemented in place.
The Browns have lived in their modest riverside home since 1997, which was red-tagged as unsafe alongside dozens of their neighbors’ houses around after the muddy, churning waters from Tropical Storm Helene roared over the Mountain Island Dam spillway on Sept. 27.
Since then, the Browns have been living out of an RV parked in their front yard. Robert won’t even step foot inside the house anymore. It’s too painful for him, Linda explains.
A cedar chest in their bedroom that belonged to Robert’s mother contained precious photographs, documents and memories from his time in the military. All of it was significantly damaged in the flood.
Soon, the couple will be moving away from the Mountain Island Lake community they’ve called home for 25 years. After enduring major floods in 2019 and 2024, they decided they couldn’t risk suffering another flooding disaster. Linda’s sister owns a plot of land in Rowan County on which the Brown’s plan to put a double-wide mobile home.
“It's on a hill, it's dry, no trees. No water.”
“He can't do it again,” Linda said, gesturing to her husband. “He just can't. I mean, he's done.”
The decision to move away was not one they took lightly. Over the years many of their neighbors have become their closest friends. Along Riverside Drive, one of the longer residential streets on the Mecklenburg County side of the Catawba River, everyone seems to know everyone’s business.
“I think the hardest part is that it was a community,” Linda said.
“It wasn't a neighborhood. There's a difference, you know what I'm saying? I mean, we get together, we do the Fourth of July parade, we do a chili cook-off, we all get together, we float, we put in our tubes at the top and we all float down, stop at each other's houses. People are going to miss people.”
What’s difficult to grapple with is the question of whether it had to be this way at all.
Mountain Island Lake is one of the smallest bodies of water on the Catawba-Wateree Chain of Lakes that Duke Energy manages as a source of hydropower. The 11-lake system starts at Lake James in Burke County and flows down to Lake Wateree in South Carolina.
Because Mountain Island Lake sits directly downstream of the “inland sea,” Lake Norman, it often suffers the brunt of flooding during high inflow events like the one during Helene. Just like in 2019, the powerful utilities company faced scrutiny by residents of nearby homes who argued that the flooding could have been mitigated by better management of lake levels upstream.
Robert and Linda Brown, along with several other area residents, told Carolina Public Press that they believe Duke Energy once again waited too long to begin lowering the levels on Norman and Mountain Island Lake. Even a foot or two less of flooding might have led to a vastly different outcome for some residents.
“We knew that storm was coming. Everybody did,” Robert Brown said.
“I kept looking. ‘Why ain't they dropping the water? Why ain't Duke Power moving the water?’”
Lakes have long, interconnected history
The relationship between Mountain Island Lake and Lake Norman has always been an unequal one. Some residents of Mountain Island Lake have long believed that Duke Energy allows the area to flood in order to protect the more expensive properties on Lake Norman.
A large part of that sentiment comes from Lake Norman rarely reaching its “full pond” elevation of 100 feet and never exceeding it by more than a few inches, according to historic data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Mountain Island Lake, meanwhile, has overflowed eight times just this century, the worst of which was during Helene when the water crested at more than 107 feet.
The underlying dynamics behind this are more nuanced, however.
Mountain Island Lake predates Norman by nearly 40 years, having been built in 1924 to provide hydroelectric power to the area. Not until 1963 was the construction of Cowan's Ford Dam completed upstream, so that Lake Norman began to fill, engulfing whole communities and farms that had been bought out by the company then known as Duke Power.
Lake Norman, named for former company president Norman A. Cocke, became the crown jewel of Duke Power’s North Carolina energy projects, generating electricity not only from its hydro units but also from coal and nuclear plants which were built on the lake. Over time, Duke also attracted developers and transformed the lake into a popular recreation hub for boaters, kayakers and fishermen.
Mountain Island Lake has experienced growth over the past century, but it still pales in comparison to Lake Norman in terms of residential and commercial development. According to documents from the latest Catawba-Wateree relicensing agreement, which was signed by stakeholders in 2015, 80% of Lake Norman’s shoreline was classified as existing or future commercial and residential development. That number was 29% for Mountain Island Lake.
Dan Brantley, who has lived on the Gaston County side of Mountain Island Lake for 47 years, has observed the dynamic between the two lakeside communities for years. He moved to the area to work as a machinist for Westinghouse, the company who supplied the reactors for the McGuire Nuclear Station.
In 1977, he purchased a lease for a plot of land which had a single-wide trailer with two rooms. Most structures around the lake up that point were small river cabins, he said. Just down the road from him was a rough-and-tumble bar that he and other bikers frequented.
Brantley eventually bought out the lease from Duke outright and removed the mobile home to build a newer, larger house with two stories and a basement. Only twice has floodwaters reached his house, he told CPP. The first was in 2019, then again during Helene.
Both instances, he said, were a result of Duke Energy consistently keeping lake levels high during the storm-prone summer months and not acting well ahead of time before large inflows of water make their way to the Catawba River Basin.
Duke calls lake flood unavoidable, residents disagree
Moving large amounts of water through the Catawba-Wateree system on short notice is a very difficult task with several variables to consider.
For one, all water that flows out of Lake Norman must then flow through Mountain Island Lake, which is about 10 times smaller by surface area. Moving too much water too quickly would do exactly what Duke hopes to avoid — flood downstream communities.
Also, an adequate amount of water must be kept in the lakes to avoid a drinking water shortage (the Charlotte area gets most of its drinking water from Mountain Island Lake and Lake Norman) and to ensure that there is enough cooling water for the coal and nuclear power plants located on Lake Norman.
In managing lake levels across the system, Duke Energy’s engineers attempt to balance these interests using real-time weather forecasts from in-house meteorologists.
“This storm was historic and the rain amount for the Catawba-Wateree River Basin far exceeded national and global forecasts,” Duke Energy spokesperson Ben Williamson told CPP in an email statement.
“Forecasting actual inflow from an approaching storm is a complex and inexact science. Duke Energy must balance preparatory drawdowns with the possibility the storm will miss the river basin to avoid an unintentional drinking water shortage, particularly if drought conditions occur. The lakes also provide water for industrial uses, power generation and recreation.”
Every decision made during heavy rain events is a gamble, but after each flood Mountain Island Lake residents are starting to feel more and more like they are getting shorted.
Brantley said he doesn’t buy Duke Energy’s explanation for the flooding during Helene. He pointed to lake level data for Lake Norman, which Duke Energy makes publicly available on its lake levels webpage, as evidence of their failure to draw down the lakes enough to avoid catastrophic flooding.
The typical target level for Lake Norman from May through October, as specified in the licensing agreement mandated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is 98 feet. The designated minimum during those months is 95 feet, and the critical reservoir elevation, defined as the lowest possible level that the lake can be while still functioning as a source of power and drinking water, is 90 feet.
Each time a lake goes over its designated maximum or under its minimum, Duke Energy must file a document with the FERC explaining the reasons for the deviations from the licensing agreement.
According to a letter that Duke Energy filed to the FERC on Oct. 2, the water level on Lake Norman remained steady around 97 feet from Sept. 25 through Sept. 26, when the storm reached North Carolina. There was no indication in the letter that Duke Energy took any proactive measures to lower the levels on Lake Norman ahead of the storm, although CPP reported that they did open floodgates on Cowan’s Ford Dam as the lake approached full pond.
The letter explained that Duke Energy did begin to draw the water level on Mountain Island Lake back down to its target of 96 feet early on Sept. 26. The day before, the water level on the lake was as high as 98 feet.
The level on Mountain Island Lake exceeded 100 feet at around 7 p.m. on Sept. 26, and crested at 107.9 feet at 11:30 p.m. on Sept. 28.
That, Brantley said, is unacceptable.
“Maybe they couldn't have drawn it down to 90 (feet), but what did they draw it down to? The answer is nothing. They didn't try,” he said.
“They misjudged the elevation and the amount of water. It wasn't that they couldn't do it. They misjudged it and blew it.”
The FERC has not yet responded to Duke Energy’s filing explaining its actions during Helene, a spokesperson confirmed to CPP on Monday. Included in the case docket are comments in response to Duke Energy’s filing from Lake Drive resident Erik Jendresen, who reiterated many of the talking points from Brantley and the Browns.
“Duke Energy's lack of preemptive action defies logic, flies in the face of common sense, implies a mismanagement of this river basin that is incompetent at best, intentional at worst,” Jendresen’s letter read.
Path forward includes buyouts, readiness efforts
When the water on Mountain Island Lake reached flood stage level, it came roaring over the spillway on Mountain Island Dam and barreled straight towards the homes on Riverhaven Drive, Lake Drive and Riverside Drive.
Neither county reported deaths related to the flooding, but the four homes closest to the spillway on Riverhaven Drive were completely swept off their foundations and floated away, leaving only a messy pit of debris in their place.
Damage assessments from Mecklenburg County showed an additional 89 homes had water enter their living spaces. Some of those homes are considered total losses. An additional six structures in Gaston County were destroyed.
Mecklenburg County announced on Nov. 6 that it would offer buyouts to some homeowners, prioritizing those who suffered the most damage.
In his statement to CPP, Williamson said Duke Energy is “taking several steps to provide additional support throughout all of North Carolina for those impacted by Hurricane Helene.”
The company said in a Nov. 25 press release that it had committed $2.2 million to disaster relief in North Carolina, although much of the announced funding was targeted to western North Carolina communities and did not mention those impacted along the Catawba River.
The release did announce $500,000 in grants from the Duke Energy Foundation for “disaster readiness in central and eastern North Carolina,” although it's unclear what that money will be specifically used for.
After the 2019 flood, a group of Mountain Island Lake residents met with Duke Energy representatives to voice their concerns in a town-hall-style meeting that was organized with the help of state Sen. Natasha Marcus, D-Mecklenburg. Duke Energy was also sued that year and later settled with a group of Riverside Drive residents whose homes were impacted by that flood.
Whether Mountain Island Lake residents will take similar action this time around remains unclear.
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.