A newly-cleared lot at Lake Waccamaw flooded due to Hurricane Idalia’s heavy rains and a major rainstorm days before, leading to flooding and runoff worries for several homeowners on Waccamaw Shores.
When the storm hit last week, the 50-foot lot owned by Sam Black was cleared and being prepared for filling prior to building a new home, Mayor Matt Wilson said.
“We had five to six inches of rain the week before,” Wilson said, “then we got another ten or eleven inches on top of that. By comparison, we had 18 inches during Hurricane Florence.”
Wilson said Black was planning to start filling the property in the near future, but the timing of the storm “made that impossible.
“Until the water goes down, he can’t start filling it and building,” Wilson said. “The permits are in place, and the work was planned out. The hurricane just got in the way.”
The lot was covered in trees until recently, Wilson said.
“There has always been water in there when we’ve had big rains, but you couldn’t see it,” he explained. “Clearing the lot made everything visible, and it created a clear path for the water to flow.
“The river and the swamps can only take so much water at a time,” Wilson said. “It’s going down, but when the water is high, it’s going to follow the path of least resistance. In this case, it was this cleared lot.”
Only two areas of the lake had water problems during Idalia, Wilson said. Some flooding was reported on Robeson Avenue, a perennial troublespot, and the other was at the newly-cleared lot on Waccamaw Shores.
“During Florence, that area was one of the first places the water crossed the road,” Wilson said. ”It’s going to happen.”
“We all love Lake Waccamaw, and love living here,” Wilson said, “but a lot of our land is lowlying. Some of it is filled swampland. When there’s a rain event like a hurricane, there’s going to be water.”
