In typical Jim Justice fashion, the governor threw out a half-baked answer to a serious question about flood prevention during his anything-but-COVID briefing Aug. 23: “West Virginia needs to build lakes,” he said, “lots of them.”
Lakes can and do help with flood control and prevention. However, the answer isn’t to create more of them.
The biggest reason is that creating a lake from scratch often means flooding entire communities. There’s a website called “The Atlas of Drowned Towns” dedicated to West Coast communities that were flooded and destroyed in pursuit of manmade river development projects. In fact, there’s one such community below Cheat Lake.
A better idea would be to maintain the waterways we already have. Whenever it rains, runoff that flows into streams, ponds, lakes, etc., carries with it sediment: dirt, rocks, grass, leaves and litter. The sediment builds up in the waterways and leaves less room for the water. If you routinely dredge out some of the sediment, there will be more room for water within the stream’s or lake’s confines and therefore it’s less likely to overflow its banks.
Justice also mentioned that “we” could level off mountains and put people there instead of in relatively flat floodplains and river valleys, but leveled off mountains are part of the problem. Mountaintop removal mining strips the hills of all vegetation, leaving them barren. For decades, “reclaiming” strip mine sites involved packing the rubble tight and planting grass on it. But nothing else would grow, and grass alone can’t hold the water and sediment that the forested hills once could, and the compacted dirt doesn’t allow water to seep deep into the ground.
Or, strip mines get turned into strip malls. Mountaintop removal sites near towns or cities may just be repurposed into shopping centers or housing developments. The land gets covered in pavement and other impermeable surfaces, so the rainwater simply runs off and keeps running until it finally finds dirt or grass to sink into. But when the ground becomes over saturated, the water keeps running — and that’s when we start to get flooding.
The single greatest tool we have against flooding? Plants.
Maintaining current and creating new green spaces are key to controlling future floods. We want the water to sink down into the earth, not to drain across its surface or stand in puddles. And for that, we need to have green spaces. Despite what you might think, development and green spaces can live in harmony. Here’s how:
- Interspersing islands of grass and trees throughout parking lots, something many businesses already do. Adding more or making them larger increases the surface area and therefore the amount of water absorbed from rain.
- Bioswales or rain gardens along streets and sidewalks. These are plant-filled areas that sit a little lower than the surrounding impermeable surfaces. The water flows into the bioswale or garden, where water can be filtered and absorbed, before any excess flows into stormwater drains.
- Green roofs on large buildings. A green roof design consists of multiple layers, with vegetation at the very top and a waterproof membrane closest to the roof. A green roof not only collects water, it’s also a great insulator.
- Finally, permeable paving. Basically, instead of one large, smooth, impervious asphalt parking lot or street, use more porous asphalt/concrete that allows water to eventually drip through, or use paving stones, whose small gaps and channels allow rain to flow down into the soil underneath.
So no, Gov. Justice, we do not need more lakes to catch runoff. We need more greenspaces to prevent runoff in the first place.
