Bumpus Cove residents want answers for ongoing flooding issue
WASHINGTON COUNTY, Tenn. (WJHL) – Tina Presnell said her land in Bumpus Cove has been owned by her family for generations. However, she is looking for answers on how to deal with an ongoing flooding issue.
'The county highway department years ago, they put a culvert in that comes out behind over there on the other lot, and the water comes down on the people,' said Presnell. 'I've called them numerous times and asked them for help, and they say they can't help.'
Presnell says flooding on her family's property has gotten worse after Hurricane Helene due to a culvert behind the property.
'There's just nothing to hold anything back,' she said. 'We don't have underbrush. We have high-up trees, but it just won't hold the water.'
William Emery is a neighbor to the Presnell family and lives in front of the culvert.
He says the flooding he experiences has been the same even before Hurricane Helene.
'I noticed it started flooding five, six years ago,' said Emery. 'It's underwater every time it comes the rain. But it don't never quit running. Since that ditch line hadn't been cleaned out, it's got worse.'
Emery said he, too, has contacted the Washington County Highway Department about the culvert, but nothing has been done.
'Somebody is gonna do something, somewhere,' said Presnell. 'It's just got to be fixed.'
'I'd like to get some help,' said Emery. 'It'd be much appreciated.'
News Channel 11 did reach out to the Washington County Mayor's Office and the Washington County Highway Department. We did not hear back from the mayor's office before airtime.
The highway department previously said the culvert was installed over 40 years ago, and they are not able to work on private property.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
2 hours ago
- Miami Herald
As Trump cuts FEMA, Florida says it will take care of residents
On the eve of hurricane season, Florida's top disaster official promised Floridians that they will see no changes to the state's hurricane response despite the turmoil at FEMA over staff cuts and proposed slashes to state disaster aid. Kevin Guthrie, the executive director of Florida's Division of Emergency Management, said it's not about money. Even if FEMA cuts the amount of cash it pays out to a state after a disaster, he stressed that state leaders 'have never, ever made decisions based on whether we're going to get reimbursed by the federal government.' 'You go out to protect life, safety. You go out to stabilize scenes. You go out to protect the environment. That is what we have been doing for decades inside Florida,' he said. 'That's what we're going to continue to do for the coming decades ahead.' READ MORE: Florida says it's ready for hurricane season, with or without FEMA's help Florida was smacked with two devastating storms last year, and forecasters say the upcoming hurricane season, which starts June 1, is set to be another active season. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, raising global temperatures that in turn lead to stronger, wetter and more deadly hurricanes. At a press conference Saturday in Fort Lauderdale, Guthrie said the state was fully prepared for the season — even if FEMA might not be. The agency is down more than 2,000 employees and a dozen senior leaders this year, as President Donald Trump pushes his new vision for the beleaguered agency. Part of that change involves shifting more responsibility — and costs — for disaster cleanup to the states. Already, FEMA has begun to act on that mission. Last week, the agency denied North Carolina's request to keep covering the entire tab for Hurricane Helene recovery. Instead, FEMA will continue helping with 75% of the costs, the bare minimum required. And yet, Guthrie said, Florida is prepared to accept the president's new vision for the agency, with the federal government still picking up the tab. It's unclear if Florida's annual budget includes more cash for storm recovery, as the legislature and governor have not yet agreed on one. Gov. Ron DeSantis asked Guthrie, as a member of the federal FEMA review council, to push FEMA to shift more of its state assistance to block grants that states like Florida can spend directly. Guthrie said the state is even considering preparing for the 'challenge' of directly giving cash to survivors after a disaster, a FEMA program known as individual assistance. 'We are already having these conversations about if the federal government allows us to run an individual assistance program, we're ready to get that done,' he said. 'We believe we can do it just as fast, if not faster than the federal government.'
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Pine Island park has an opening date. What the Lake Murray attraction offers
South Carolina's newest state park has an opening date. Park officials on Wednesday updated the Lake Murray community on plans for Pine Island, which will now have a 'soft opening' to the public on Oct. 1 after years of preparation. Initially, the park will open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, said Tim Ritter, Pine Island's new on-site park manager. That will allow the new park to gauge how many visitors the new park might draw during the off season and work out any kinks before an expected busier season next summer. Ritter and other park rangers hosted an open house on Wednesday so the public could take a look at the island that has been closed to visitors for years now, and get a sense of what the parks department hopes to do with it before it opens back up. Pine Island was once maintained as a getaway spot for employees of South Carolina Electric & Gas, which owned the lake and its hydropower dam. It was closed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the struggling utility — which was absorbed by Dominion Energy in 2019 — offered the island to the state as a potential future park to meet its tax liabilities after the failed V.C. Summer nuclear project. The new 27-acre park was originally slated to be opened by the fall of 2024, but several snags delayed the planned opening. A fire destroyed the building meant to house the park manager in April of that year, and then the island suffered damage to both trees and structures from Hurricane Helene last fall. Now the park is back on track, and the S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism is eager to show it off. For the last three months, Ritter has been living in the rebuilt manager's house with his wife and 10-month-old son. The former manager of Croft State Park in Spartanburg has family in Chapin, while his wife's family is in Columbia, so 'we're so fortunate to be able to live on site,' he said. The surrounding community has been very welcoming. One neighbor even called to tell them when a delivery person left their packages at the island's entry booth in the rain. Neighbors had been concerned about traffic headed to the small island on the narrow residential streets leading from the interstate. Parks officials said the plan is to limit entry at the park gate based on how many parking spaces are available on the island, but that nearby residents can walk in or bicycle if they get a 'park passport', similar to how the park service manages its beach parks. 'We don't want you to be coming home from church and be waiting an hour to turn into your driveway,' said regional parks chief John Moon. Entrance for the park will be $6 for adults, $3.75 for seniors, $3.50 for children between 6 and 15, and free for kids 5 and under. The park still has some repairs to make to its docks and its picnic stations, which may be adjusted depending on how many visitors the park sees once it opens, Moon said. The parks department plans to renovate the existing clubhouse into what will be called Sunset Hall, with large windows to take in the views of the lake and a stone patio with a fire pit, which the park will then rent out for events. But gone will be the old clubhouse pool. Instead the park service wants to offer spaces for swimming in the lake. Spectacular sunsets over the lake are seen as a top attraction, and Moon said the park hopes to offer by-appointment, after-hour tours so guests will be able to see the sight. 'The sunsets are absolutely stunning,' Ritter said. The park also plans to do offer boat owners slips at the marina for six-month to one-year leases. Residents who live within two square miles of the park will have the first opportunity to purchase them, Ritter said.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Opinion - Public safety crisis: Budget cuts may cause US dams to fail
Across the nation, dams are deteriorating while the storms pounding against them grow stronger and more frequent. The result: A growing number of disasters and an unacceptable level of flood risk for downstream communities. Lives, homes and livelihoods hang in the balance, even as dam safety oversight and funding are being eliminated in the current Congress. May 31 is National Dam Safety Awareness Day — a moment to remember the people who have died in dam failures and to urge action to ensure no more lives are lost in unnecessary and avoidable catastrophes. It should also be a wake-up call. The threat is not theoretical, it is reality. And the harsh reality is, it is getting worse and our elected leaders have yet to respond. There are more than half a million dams obstructing rivers and streams in all 50 states and in almost every community. Ownership and associated liability in the event of dam-breaks spans private owners, localities, states and the federal government, which controls some of the largest and most dangerous dams. Dams are infrastructure, and infrastructure fails. When dams fail, a wall of water surges downstream, destroying everything in its path. In the U.S. alone, thousands have died from dam failures. Even low head dams — smaller dams that typically have water continuously flowing over the dam crest — can be deadly, having entrapped and drowned 1,400 people in their hydraulic churn over the years. Dam failures are not tragedies of the distant past. Nearly 80 percent of emergency incidents and dam failures have occurred in the last 20 years. In 2019, for example, the Spencer Dam in Nebraska failed during a winter storm and drowned a man. Just last year the Rapidan Dam in Minnesota failed during a flood, swallowing a riverside home. The dam was known to be in a state of disrepair, and the dam owner had been weighing the decision to repair or remove the structure. Hurricane Helene, which dumped an unprecedented amount of rainfall onto the Southeast, pushed dams beyond their limit. Dozens of state-regulated dams failed or were severely damaged in record-breaking flooding. Many others were further degraded — leaving them compromised as the 2025 hurricane season begins. The majority of our nation's dams are beyond their design lifespan. With the average age across the nation surpassing six decades, it should be unsurprising that they were not built to withstand the storm and flood intensities that we are seeing now. Many are accidents just waiting to happen, especially as the funding and staff that maintain or upgrade these antiquated structures are being cut. The U.S. has put far too little investment into fixing this underappreciated public safety crisis, leading the American Society of Civil Engineers to give our dams a grade of D+. And a failing grade may well be around the corner. In the last two years, Congress has made major cuts to dam safety programs at dam-owning agencies and massive cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency National Dam Safety Program funding. This program provides critical support to state dam safety offices and for dam owners voluntarily seeking to repair or remove dams with high hazard potential. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 provided an influx of funds, but more than half of those dedicated funds were subsequently cut in the 2024 and 2025 spending bills. Restoring and sustaining sufficient funding and staffing to the FEMA National Dam Safety Program is crucial to addressing the dam safety crisis. Lack of funding will leave communities, regardless of who they voted for, having to pay the price when dams break. At the state level, dam safety offices need the staffing, funding and programmatic infrastructure to hold dam owners responsible for the safety of their dams. Loopholes that allow some dam owners — even those owning high-hazard dams — to avoid safety regulation, must be closed. Unsafe dams that are not serving a critical purpose should be removed, and funding should be made available to support those removals. It is currently estimated that it would cost $165 billion to rehabilitate all non-federal dams. The longer dams are allowed to deteriorate, the higher that price tag grows. However, as the adage goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. More than half of dams on the landscape are obsolete, no longer serving the purpose they were built to provide. An investment to remove them instead of patching them up for another day may be a cost-efficient way of eliminating safety risks and expediently restoring water quality, wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities. Our nation's outdated 20th Century dams are buckling under 21st century weather extremes. They are quickly becoming ticking time bombs without the budget to diffuse them. This is not just an infrastructure issue — it is a public safety emergency. And Congress is on the verge of failing its most basic responsibility: to protect the American people. Members of Congress need to put public safety first and approve dedicated funding for the regular upkeep, rehabilitation and removal of dams. Tom Kiernan is president and CEO of American Rivers. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
