Flood Waters Threaten Homes Along White River, Beaver Lake

Larry Olson worries that there may be others like him.t

But it’s difficult to determine how many homes were built in recent years within U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flowage easements along the White River and Beaver Lake.

The easements date from the early 1960s, soon after Beaver Lake was formed by damming the White River. The Corps says land in the flowage easements isn’t fit for human habitation because it could be needed to hold flood waters from the lake. But apparently developers have sold some lots in the easements for home sites anyway.

“It’s buyer beware,” said Olson, whose Goshen home was flooded by more than four feet of water on April 24 when the White River overflowed its banks after the area received some 12 inches of rain in three days.

“The developer should let people know, but they don’t always do that,” said Johnny Mullens, floodplain planner with the Arkansas Soil and Water Conservation Commission. “Unfortu-nately, the buyers should be doing the checking for themselves.”

Olson, executive vice president and chief credit officer for The Bank of Fayetteville, and his wife, Sylvia, built their two-story, 3,450-SF home in 2000 at 1340 Equestrian Lane in Goshen’s Riverlyn subdivision. The land and house cost them $320,000.

Olson said the flood caused about $150,000 in damage to his house and $50,000 to $75,000 in damage to its contents. And he has no flood insurance to cover that loss. The flood also caused more than $100,000 worth of damage to the house next door, which is owned by Mark and Laurie Taylor.

In the spring of 2002, floodwaters from the White River, three football fields away, lapped at the Olsons’ backyard. They called the Corps to ask when the floodgates at Beaver Dam would be opened. The Corps informed them that the Olsons and Taylors weren’t supposed to be living on that land anyway.

Olson knew 20 percent of his land was in the floodplain as defined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but he didn’t know the land on which his house sat was in a flowage easement as designated by the Corps.

“A flowage easement is a property interest acquired by the government for the operation of the reservoir,” said Karen Neisler, the Corps’ acting operations manager for Beaver Lake. “The government doesn’t have the right to place water higher than those easements legally.”

“We found out our house was illegally built in the easement,” Olson said. “It said, ‘Not suitable for human habitation.’ We had to negotiate with the Corps to let us stay.”

The flood on April 24, however, was due to “localized flooding from heavy rains that were not related to the operation of the dam or the reservoir,” Neisler said.

Unsettling Suits

Last June, Olson sued everyone he could think of who might have been at fault for not informing him of the flowage easement in Riverlyn, which was initially developed in 1995 by Jim Bryan of Huntsville. Besides the original subdivision surveyor, engineer and Lyndy Lindsey, who sold him the land, Olson sued two local title companies and two national companies.

The companies were: Landtrust Title & Closing Inc. of Farmington, serving as an agent for Old Republic National Title Co. for the home construction; and Heritage Title and Closing Co. of Fayetteville, serving as an agent for Fidelity National Title Insurance Co. for the lot purchase.

Olson said the older easement information apparently wasn’t in the title companies’ computer databases. Those databases appear to contain records that date back into the 1980s, he said.

“There’s a natural assumption that somebody else did the search back to the last transaction,” Olson said, referring to the title companies. “I believe they missed a lot of the historical filings on things like that.”

Doing a thorough land history search would require a trip to the courthouse to pore over old-fashioned paper records, he said.

“I went in and looked it up, and it took me only 10 minutes,” Olson said of the easement pertaining to his property.

Flood insurance through the FEMA is required by law for mortgaged homes within a floodplain if the community where the house is located participates in the FEMA program. Goshen didn’t participate when Olson built his house but started participating in October 2003. Olson said if he had known Goshen was part of the program at that time, he would have purchased flood insurance through the federal government, but nobody told him.

The Olsons had title insurance, which they highly recommend, but they thought the damage should amount to more than the title companies wanted to pay. Olson said he couldn’t give details of the settlement, but after spending $25,000 in legal fees, they were tired of fighting and settled the case in February with the title companies and everyone else named in the suit.

“We reluctantly settled for about half of what we thought we were entitled to,” he said. “Now, two months later, what we told them might happen has happened, and we’re stuck.”

Lawyers Title Insurance Corp. settled a similar suit with the Taylors.

Floodplain English

Part of his initial confusion, Olson said, pertained to the term “100-year floodplain.” Olson built his house on a slab at 1,144 feet above sea level. That’s exactly nine feet above the White River’s 100-year floodplain of 1,135 feet, he said. The 2002 flood reached 1,140 feet.

“We built up purposely thinking, that’s a 100-year plain: We’re safe,” he said.

Since then, Olson said he learned that “100-year floodplain” means there’s a 1 percent chance of flooding in any given year.

“They need to get away from that ‘100-year flood’ [phrase],” said John Gibson, Washington County administrator. “A 100-year flood could happen every week. That’s just a benchmark.”

Neisler said the 1,135 level is the “guiding contour for the main body of the lake.” That 1,135 level pertains to 90 percent of Beaver Lake, she said, but areas around Goshen and War Eagle have higher flowage easements (up to 1,148 in Goshen). The lake is more like a wide version of the White River in those areas.

Neisler said that when the water level is 1,135 at the dam, it could be a few feet higher or lower 30 miles away at the other end of the lake near Goshen. Three watersheds flow into the south end of the lake at Goshen. After a downpour, it takes hours for floodwaters to flow through the lake from Goshen to the dam.

Olson said the Corps opens the dam’s flood gates when the water level reaches 1,129. The day it flooded in Goshen, the level at the dam was less than 1,125, Neisler said.

“It was coming so fast, there’s no way for the lake to absorb it that quickly,” Olson said. “We had a wall of water that came north and up to the Highway 45 area and caused all the flooding in Goshen. That water came up 10 feet in one hour … The water had receded [in Goshen] by the time they opened the flood gates. The entire lake raised 10 feet in 24 hours. That’s the height of a basketball goal. In 24 hours.”

But Neisler said opening the flood gates wouldn’t have made any difference because the lake was still had five feet of water capacity at Beaver Dam.

“It’s not going to have any effect if there’s storage capacity left there,” she said. “Beaver Lake is a flood-control reservoir designed to control flooding — to help — and to store flood waters. We have no control of what happens upstream [where the White River enters the lake at Goshen].”

“This was not a real severe flood as far as floods go,” T.J. Spaul, a spokesman for the Corps in Little Rock, said emphasizing that the April 24 flood was due to localized flooding in Goshen. “We never even got to the top of the flood pool for Beaver Lake. We got close, but we didn’t get to the top.”

“You have to keep a sense of humor about these things, or you’ll go crazy,” Olson said, as his family sat down to have a dinner that was brought over by neighbors and insurance agents. “Overnight, you’ve taken a huge loss on one of your investments. Overnight, I went from a $360,000 appraisal to practically nothing. My neighbors are in the same boat. I’m going to rename my place WorldCom Manor, and they’re going to name theirs Enron Manor.”