UC Lake Dams Helped Prevent $1.8 Billion Of March Flood Damage

Dams operated by the Army Corps of Engineers prevented an estimated $1.8 billion of flood damages in the Cumberland River Basin during the March flood event.

Hydraulic Engineer Robert Dillingham said dams at Dale Hollow Lake and Center Hill Lake played a role in the flood mitigation.

“Had Center Hill and Dale Hollow never been built, you certainly would have seen 1.5 million gallons every single second that we were storing, would have naturally just flown off uncontrollable into the river,” Dillingham said.

Dillingham said damage estimates are found through hydraulic modeling. Dillingham said engineers model the water flow of a flood event and gauge what would happen without the dams.

“Post events, we do what we call natural hydraulic modeling, which would be a modeling how the river would have looked without the system of reservoir in place,” Dillingham said. “The Corp of Engineers developed the Cumberland River Water Shed through out the 40’s, 50’s and 70’s and built a system of 10 dams to provide multiple benefits.”

Up to 586 billion gallons of water was stored by flood control dams after the flood event. Dillingham said a large benefit to that is creating electricity.

“Hydro power is an enormous benefit from those, and the fact that we are able to generate electricity and use that water,” Dillingham said. “The beauty of hyrdo power is that it is a renewable resource, and once we generate with it at Dale Hollow, it goes down stream where we generate with it at Cordell Hull and then at Old Hickory and then at Cheatham.”

Dillingham said the infrastructure also ensures activities downstream can continue as well as keeping natural areas safe.

The Corps of Engineers operates four flood control dams upstream of Nashville (Wolf Creek, Dale Hollow, Center Hill, and J. Percy Priest). Since these four projects were completed, Nashville has exceeded flood stage of 40 feet only six times.