WHAT WENT WRONG AT KILN CREEK?

When it rains hard, residents throughout the Peninsula wonder if water will creep into their houses. As Hurricane Floyd showed, dozens of neighborhoods in the region are vulnerable to flooding if it rains hard enough.

Since Floyd, residents have been asking government officials what they can do to keep Mother Nature from messing up their lives.

The Daily Press starts a two-day series today that looks at why two Peninsula neighborhoods – Kiln Creek and Jamestown 1607 – flood, and what, if anything, can be done about it. (Ran on A1)

Susan Masters gets nervous when she hears about big storms heading for the Peninsula. You might, too, if you lived where she lives.

Last year, when Hurricane Floyd roared through the area, Masters had 2 inches of water in her house, in the Dunhill section of Kiln Creek. Water damaged a roll-top desk and entertainment center, neither of which could be moved upstairs. Her car and her son's car were totaled. Her family ripped up the drenched, first-floor carpet and walked on a cold concrete pad for six weeks before new carpet arrived.

"Life was absolutely horrible," Masters said, "but compared with other people, we were pretty lucky."

Ten months later – during a brief but severe storm on July 24 – she thought rain might flood her house again. The water crept halfway up her driveway before it receded.

Scores of people in Kiln Creek have similar stories to tell from those two storms.

The subdivision is one of several places on the Peninsula where water pools in yards and on streets – and sometimes enters houses – when it rains especially hard. The worst flooding in Kiln Creek occurs in the Dunhill and Edgewater neighborhoods, where lots of people have bought flood insurance, even though they don't live in a flood plain.

Kiln Creek is between 36 feet and 38 feet above sea level – high ground compared with many other parts of the Peninsula – but it turns out that it has a lot going against it when it comes to flooding.

Like other parts of the Peninsula, it was built on a thick layer of clay that doesn't allow rainwater to penetrate it, so the water pools. And it doesn't drain as quickly as it might because the land there is flat.

Wetlands once grew on the soggy ground, and they helped soak up rainwater, but they were leveled to make way for Kiln Creek.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which issues permits that allow people to drain wetlands, decided it didn't have authority over the wetlands at Kiln Creek in 1985. Then, in 1986, when the Army corps learned it did have the authority, it decided it would be unfair to the developer to exercise that authority.

Newport News and York County, the localities Kiln Creek straddles, required the developer to build stormwater pipes, curbside drains and ponds so rainwater would have somewhere to go. But now residents and officials alike question whether the drainage system is large enough and designed well enough to handle a lot of rain.

Between the clay and the flat land and the loss of wetlands and the drainage system, is it any wonder, residents say, that the place floods when it rains hard?

But Kiln Creek may flood for reasons yet unknown.

"I don't think it's as simple as saying, ‘It's built on clay, and it's flat, and the wetlands are gone,’ " said Eddie Wrightson, the city's acting assistant director of engineering. "There's something else going on there. I’m not going to speculate on what it might be. Maybe it's a combination of eight or 10 things. Something's not working the way it should work."

The known geological history of Kiln Creek – and much of the Peninsula – goes back hundreds of thousands of years, when it was part of the floor of what is now the Chesapeake Bay.

The ancient bay floor was relatively flat, and much of it was packed deep with clay, said Gerald Johnson, a geology professor at the College of William and Mary.

When the water level receded, the exposed land remained flat and full of clay.

Over the years, wetlands – mostly wooded swamps – grew on the land where Kiln Creek now stands.

In 1984, R.G. Moore, a Virginia Beach developer, decided he wanted to build houses there.

Moore turned to the Army corps. Without an Army corps permit to drain wetlands, a building project – no matter how large or small – won't happen.

By 1985, when Moore contacted the Army corps, scientists only recently had proven that wetlands – swamps, bogs and marshes – do a lot of good things. They soak up floodwaters. They filter pollutants out of waterways. And they provide food and shelter for waterfowl, shellfish and small mammals.

That was quite a revelation. Just a few years earlier, wetlands were considered worthless. Farmers drained them to expand their fields, and developers drained them to build houses and golf courses.

Army corps staffers and Moore's people began meeting in March 1985. Nicholas Konchuba, an environmental scientist with the Army corps, wrote what amounted to a diary of what happened that month.

On March 15, 1985, after Konchuba and others walked through the property, he wrote:

"Discovered … swamp area at head of Brick Kiln Creek. … Discovered large moss swamp north of Brick Kiln."

The Army corps identified about 200 acres of wetlands there.

Everyone knew the area was swampy, but the Army corps had to determine whether it had "jurisdiction over the wetlands" – in other words, the authority to require Moore to obtain a permit to drain wetlands or to forbid him from draining them.

The corps has that authority over wetlands along rivers and other navigable waterways and over wetlands adjacent to those waterways. It also has that authority over other wetlands – called isolated wetlands – but only if there is a connection between those wetlands and interstate commerce.

For example, if ducks fly into wetlands and duck hunters from another state go there to hunt, that constitutes a connection to interstate commerce.

On March 25, Konchuba wrote: "Must find connection or no jurisdiction."

The Army corps could find no evidence of interstate commerce on that land in 1985, so it allowed Moore to proceed without a permit.

He almost immediately began buying land.

Then on Feb. 11, 1986, the Army corps released the Kelly Memorandum, written by Army corps Brig. Gen. Patrick J. Kelly. It explained how to establish links between wetlands and interstate commerce.

The memo, barely more than one page, stated that "all waterbodies which are or reasonably could be used by migratory birds are waters of the United States" and are considered wetlands over which the corps has jurisdiction.

In short, the Kelly Memorandum made it easier for the Army corps to claim jurisdiction over wetlands.

Soon after its release, the corps briefly tried to take jurisdiction over the wetlands at Kiln Creek, Konchuba said recently, "but we later realized we were too late. He (Moore) had bought a lot of property based on our initial opinion, and it would have been unfair to reverse our decision."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and environmental groups, such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Sierra Club, were furious.

Fish and Wildlife called the corps’ decision "inexplicable." The bay foundation called it "perplexing."

Had the Kelly Memorandum come out a year earlier, Konchuba recently said, Kiln Creek might look "fairly different" than it looks today.

He said the Army corps probably would have required Moore to preserve some of the 200 acres of wetlands that were destroyed.

And Kiln Creek might not flood as badly as it does.

Konchuba, who now serves as chief of the regulatory section for eastern Virginia, said it's generally true that an area that loses wetlands will flood more frequently and more severely because the wetlands are no longer there to soak up rainwater.

He said, "It doesn't take too much to flood areas that used to be wetlands."

The Daily Press tried to interview Moore for this article, but he did not return numerous phone calls.

M. Stanley Krause likes Kiln Creek. He served as vice chairman of the Newport News Planning Commission when the commission approved Kiln Creek.

Krause, the architect at Christopher Newport University, said if he had to move, he would move to Kiln Creek, because he likes the diverse housing there – everything from apartments and townhouses to duplexes and spacious single-family houses.

He said planning commission members in 1986 discussed where rainwater would drain and required Moore to include drainage ditches, drains and ponds so the water would have somewhere to go. York County officials required the same thing.

Moore had to meet the minimum state standards, which still apply.

The storm drains were designed to handle a two- year storm, the pipes a 10-year storm and the lakes a 10-year storm. A two-year storm is one that is expected to happen every two years, while a 100-year storm packs a severity expected only once in a century.

Defining a two-year storm or a 10-year storm depends on where you live.

On the Peninsula, a two-year storm equals 31/2 inches of rain that falls in a 24-hour period, and a 10-year storm equals 51/2 inches of rain that falls in a 24-hour period. (In a region where it rains less than it does here, it takes less rain to equal a two-year or a 10-year storm.)

Hurricane Floyd was considered a 500-year storm, and the July 24 storm that scared Susan Masters was considered anywhere from a 20-year to 50-year storm.

Masters is one of scores of people in Kiln Creek who question the effectiveness of the subdivision's drainage system.

Lou DeGrace, who lives in Kiln Creek's Edgewater neighborhood, is another. Newport News firefighters used a boat to evacuate DeGrace's family from the neighborhood during Floyd. After he saw the flooding from the July 24 storm, he bought flood insurance.

"I thought this type of flooding should not be happening during a heavy rain," DeGrace said. "I don't want to take any chances.

"To me," he added, "there's something wrong if the ponds get too high."

Mark Ailsworth, head of the Peninsula Housing & Builders Association, also served on the Newport News Planning Commission when it approved Kiln Creek.

He said he isn't sure why it floods, but residents have a right to expect local officials to ensure that developers provide adequate infrastructure, including good roads and effective systems to handle rainwater.

"There are going to be unexpected factors, like a hurricane," Ailsworth said, "but we have 150 years of civil engineering history and experience to fall back on. The laws of physics only bend so much."

In York County and elsewhere, local officials are grappling with whether to require developers to build drainage systems for 25-year or 50-year storms.

It's not an easy choice, the officials say. No one wants to live in a subdivision that floods, but building those drainage systems would cost developers more, and the developers would pass higher building costs along to homeowners, who would pay more for houses.

Even so, Brian Woodward, York County's chief of utilities, said his staff is looking into whether to recommend that county officials raise stormwater design standards for low-lying areas, especially in the southern part of the county.

The Army corps has agreed to help Newport News conduct a hydrology study of Kiln Creek, and the city plans to add another drain to the stormwater pond in the subdivision's Dunhill neighborhood so that the pond there drains faster during storms.

"We’re going to find out what's causing this flooding – I know we will – and if it's like other projects," said Eddie Wrightson of the city's Engineering Department, "we’re going to be very surprised."

COMING MONDAY: Questions remain after a rare flood in James City County's Jamestown 1607 neighborhood.

Mark Di Vincenzo can be reached at 247-4719 or by e-mail at [email protected]

FLOOD TERMS

Flood – An overflow of land not normally covered by water; a temporary increase in streamflow.

Flood plain – Land adjoining a stream (or other body of water) which has been or may be covered with water during a flood.

100-year rainfall event – A storm that has the capacity to drop 8 or 9 inches of rain in a 24-hour period on the Peninsula.

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