02-04-2025
Nashville's Army Corp of Engineers address flooding concerns ahead of heavy rain threat
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Officials with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nashville District are monitoring the risk of severe flooding as Middle Tennessee prepares for several days of heavy rain.
As currently forecasted, the organization does not have huge concerns for the upper-parts of the Cumberland River, near Nashville.
Flooding concerns across Middle Tennessee ahead of more storms in the forecast
Instead, areas of higher concern are downstream and mainly to the west of Nashville like Montgomery and Cheatham counties, according to the Army Corp.
'This volume of rain has certainly got our attention and can absolutely cause a lot of problems,' said Robert Dillingham, civil engineer for Nashville's Army Corps Water Management Center. 'There's a lot of unregulated streams… the Harpeth River, the Red River. If you get 5 to 7 inches of rain, you're going to see some flooding.'
Nashville's Army Corp of Engineers regulates four dam projects across the region. Dillingham said they don't plan to stop water flow at any of them, as of now.
'We have a very large ability to store water in those projects, ahead of this rainfall event,' explained Dillingham. 'When the rainfall does start occurring, we'll be rapidly responding to the inflow, making releases [if needed] from our mainstream reservoir projects and making adjustments, as mother nature provides.'
'It's kind of scary': Middle Tennessee hydrologist talks about likely flooding later this week
'You look and say, well, 'This is the April average in two days,' Dillingham continued. 'But is that abnormal? I don't necessarily think so. Now, 7 to 10 inches-plus, that's certainly a whole other scale there; that is a little bit extreme. But that's not really what's forecasted for Nashville at this time.'
News 2 asked the agency how much of what they do nowadays is based on what they learned in 2010's flooding disaster.
'If the rainfall that occurred on 1 May and 2 May of 2010 [17 inches] happened tomorrow, you'd see very similar flooding. There's nothing we can do,' Dillingham answered. 'But internally, our processes, our communication, our backups, our modeling system has all improved (since then).'
As the storms move in Wednesday, Dillingham encouraged Nashville-area residents to stay updated on the agency's social media pages and website for information on possible water releases along the Cumberland River basin.
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