CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Digging a new creek bed, at night, through an active landslide is by no means a simple task, even for an experienced contractor.
But Rodney Loftis Jr. and his crew took on that challenge - and won.
Quick thinking and a precarious plan by Rodney Loftis and Son Contracting saved dozens of homes, businesses and the Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association from a watery encounter.
After a portion of Yeager Airport’s runway extension collapsed on March 12 emergency officials noted that if the slide kept moving, it would block Elk Two Mile Creek, potentially flooding dozens of buildings upstream from the slide.
Loftis, whose company holds the stream restoration and earthwork contract for Kanawha County, was notified by county officials of the emergency.
Loftis left a job in St. Mary’s and was on-site by that Thursday evening as the water continued to rise.
“It took about three to four hours to come up with a very good plan,” he said. “There was no access to it.”
Loftis and a member of his crew, Dale Mobley, devised a scheme to drive equipment up on top of the slide and begin digging a new diversion channel for the creek to stop the backup of water.
“It was a super risky idea, but the water was rising fast and something had to be done,” he said.
Crews finished that channel between 2 and 3 a.m. Friday morning, but Mother Nature had other plans.
The slide shifted again, and 12 hours later, the newly-created channel was blocked, and Loftis and his crew had to open a route again.
To better access space for equipment to create a new diversion, crews needed to be on the south bank of the creek - the same place as a red-roofed home whose residents had already evacuated.
In order to have enough room to maneuver equipment needed, the house had to be torn down, but not before airport officials met with the property owner.
A crude dirt road was built from Barlow Drive to the property that, until the slide, was only accessible from a bridge over Elk Two Mile Creek. Loftis’s crew removed a number of possessions from the house, using backhoes and other machinery to take items over the hill and out of harm’s way.
By the end, two machines worked constantly for 24 hours to dig a new creek bed, resulting in two operators working 32 hours before a break. Loftis spent that Friday night in his truck to keep tabs on the creek, airport officials have said.
The stream was open again by Friday evening, though county emergency officials continued to pump more than 20 million gallons of water from one side of the slide to the other to help bring water levels down faster.
“It’s been an every other day thing since,” Loftis said, noting his crews are monitoring the creek continuously. “We might have it now where it is good to go for a while.”
The area was hydroseeded March 26.
The new channel - a high-walled culvert bounded by orange dirt - is several hundred feet from where Elk Two Mile Creek once flowed. The remains of the red-roofed home are on the side of the southern hill.
With the trees removed and the dirt turned over, the new channel gives the appearance of something out of southeast Utah than West Virginia.
“You look at what will give water the least amount of resistance,” he said. “We had to work with what we had geographically,”
Loftis said his company has done stream restoration and stream obstruction removal projects in the past, but “to this magnitude and this level of emergency, no.”
“You had something that was building quick and had nowhere to go,” he said.
Loftis and county emergency officials will continue to monitor the new creek bed as long as necessary and airport officials praised Loftis’ work at their board meeting.
Airport Director Rick Atkinson said the airport likely will need to conduct remediation work along the creek and airport authorities are working with the state Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to determine the next step for Elk Two Mile.
The creek project falls under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps, said Kelley Gillenwater, DEP spokeswoman. DEP officials have been keeping tabs on the site, but “as of right now, we don’t have any regulatory oversight,” she said.
Gillenwater added that the airport does hold a stormwater construction permit for its runway extension project and may need a new permit when a fix is identified.
Because Loftis has a county contract, the Kanawha County Commission has been funding the work, which has cost $15,000 so far.
Commissioners said at their meeting they intend to seek reimbursement from whatever party is determined to be responsible for the slide.
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Information from: Charleston Daily Mail, https://www.charlestondailymail.com
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