Official Calls Cobb Dams 'Ticking Time Bombs'

All six incorporated cities in Cobb County must approve new disaster regulations to continue receiving federal funding for disaster prevention, Powder Springs Mayor Pat Vaughn said.

Disaster regulations, created by the Georgia Emergency Management Agency and Federal Emergency Management Agency, are updated every five years, the mayor said after Wednesday night’s City Council work session.

The council is set to vote on adopting the pre-disaster plan at Monday’s City Council meeting.

Parts of the plan are the result of the September 2009 floods, Vaughn said. Rain totaled 20-plus inches in parts of Georgia over a relatively short period of time, breaking 100-year flood plains, destroying houses and taking lives.

The new disaster rules include labeling bodies of water as hazards that previously didn’t hold that classification, and creating new ways to preemptively combat flooding.

William Higgins, manager for Cobb County Water System’s Stormwater Management Division, explained potential flooding problems to the council Wednesday and offered ways to combat them.

Many areas in Cobb County were developed before flood maps were made, Higgins said.

“The first maps came out in ’79,” he said. “A lot of the homes on Hopkins Road and elsewhere in the older parts of the county were built well before that when people didn’t know. “

“Frankly,” he added, “we’re paying for it now.”

The county’s “long-range goal,” he said, is to purchase houses in the 100-year flood plain and use those areas as parks.

“We want to get as many people out of the flood plain as we can and reserve those areas for what nature intended to do,” he said.

Councilman Tom Bevirt suggested impact fees, which are paid by new developers, as a way to raise money for flood prevention.

Higgins said there isn’t enough new development for them.

Councilman Al Thurman said: “Obviously in the future, we’re going to have to look at some kind of safeguard.”

Another flooding hazard in Cobb County Higgins mentioned is dams around farm ponds that were built in the 1940s and ‘50s. Many of those farms have turned into residential suburbs while the ponds remain, he said.

The dams around the ponds are “ticking time bombs,” he said.

“Many people who buy those properties think: ‘God put that lake there. There’s trees growing on the earthen embankment. It looks natural as can be,’” he said. “They don’t realize that’s a manmade structure, and as we all know, manmade structures require maintenance.”

There are 168 such dams in Cobb County, Higgins said. Of those, 25 are labeled as highly hazardous and are being regulated by the state, he added.

But it’s the remaining ones regulated at the county level that pose problems because of their multitude, he said.

To ensure the dams don’t become harmful, Higgins said his agency is trying to steer future development away from them. Also, he mentioned, deepening the bodies of water could help.

“All the sudden, you have more space in that lake to store floods,” he said.

The cost to deepen the water is 17 cents per cubic foot, Higgins said, which can add up into the thousands when talking in terms of acres.

But in spite of best efforts, sometimes there’s nothing that can be done when extreme rainfall hits, he said.

“I know people out there don’t want to know how much it rained; they just want to know what we’re going to do,” Higgins said. “But the fact is, 22 inches of rain is a disaster in any urbanized area of the world.”

Other items discussed at Wednesday’s work session that will be voted on Monday include:

• A request from Pucket EMS to use 3931 Old Austell Road as an ambulance service facility. This location was used by Pucket in the past, Vaughn said. “They’re going back to their old location they were in several years ago,” she said.
• A $10,000 contract with Kennesaw-based JRM Management to oversee the July 4 Independence Day Celebration. “They oversee it and set it up, get the entertainment, clean up, provide for the vendors and all that stuff,” Vaughn said.
• A resolution declaring the fountain in the town square as surplus because it no longer works. The council questioned who would buy it. “We need to call these people on television that go around buying junk,” Bevirt joked.
• A contract with Cobb County to conduct November's elections.
• Contracts with Comcast and Deltacom for telecommunications. The council asked City Manager Rick Eckert for clarification on the numbers in the contracts, and he said he would have that information to them by Monday.
• Applications for push rods for car shows downtown on April 30, July 30 and Oct. 29.
• The deannexation of two properties—3655 Sharon Drive and 2860 New Macland Road—and the annexation of 5455 Powder Springs-Dallas Road.

(The discussion items below from Wednesday won't require votes Monday)

• The Powder Springs Post Office receiving a bomb threat Tuesday.
• Thurman requested to see financial reports more frequently from Eckert. “The reason we haven’t seen one—and I’ve been pretty upset about that—(is) because quite frankly the software we have is apparently still very hard to use,” Eckert said. The city manager assured the council he would have reports to them by Monday.
• A request from the American Legion for Vaughn to dedicate the first weekend in August to Robert Pearson, who died in October at age 50 in a motorcycle accident. Though Pearson was not born in Powder Springs, he lived in the city nearly all his life, according to a representative from the local American Legion chapter. He was an active member in the community, served 20 years in the military, and was a member of various American Legion organizations, the Air Force Sergeants Association and Veterans of Foreign Wars, the representative told the council. The weekend would include activities hosted by the American Legion.