Strong and Resilient

Nolichucky Dam and Its Neighbors Endure Epic Flood

On Friday night, Sept. 27, Brad Haynes watched with growing concern as the water level at TVA’s Nolichucky Dam near Greeneville, Tennessee, rose 4 feet in about an hour.

The swelling waters prompted the TVA Dam Safety engineer to move uphill to a dollar store parking lot, where he planted a stake in the ground to measure the water’s rise.

With the dam no longer in his sight, Haynes feared the worst when he began hearing sharp cracking sounds.

Meanwhile, less than 4 miles down the Nolichucky River, George Birdwell had also retreated to high ground.

Birdwell was watching floodwaters from the Nolichucky surge into a small tributary, the Meadow Creek, which runs about 100 yards west of the home his family has occupied for six generations.

Mindful of the great flood of 1901, which inundated the house up to the fireplace mantel, the Birdwells had moved everything upstairs.

But by late that night, floodwaters were lapping at the second-story windowpanes, reaching the soffits just beneath the gutters.

Birdwell sat outside alone, keeping vigil.

“I figured if the old house floated away or collapsed, somebody needed to see it happen,” Birdwell said. “I sat up all night.”

George Birdwell watched all night from atop this hill as floodwaters engulfed his family home.

‘That Old Girl’

When the sun came up, the dam and the house were still standing, and the floodwaters were receding.

Soon there was a new flood – of workers, friends, relatives and strangers. They showed up to restore infrastructure and help flood victims salvage what they could and dig out from a thick layer of shiny mud.

The Nolichucky River flood that crested around 1:30 a.m. Sept. 28 stunned even families like the Birdwells with long memories of floods in the area. And it tested the 111-year-old dam beyond what anyone expected it would ever face.

For the first time in its 91-year history, TVA issued a Condition Red warning: The flows over the dam had exceeded TVA’s safety criteria.

The flood catastrophically damaged the dam’s powerhouse, a local historic landmark and part of the fabric of the community.

But Nolichucky Dam itself weathered the storm. The cracking sounds that had terrified Haynes turned out to be trees getting snapped by the floodwaters.

“That old girl, she really held on,” Jennifer Dodd, TVA’s general manager for Dam Safety, said. “That was a really old dam taking on way more water than has ever been seen there. That dam held on in greater adversity than you would ever expect. But maybe that girl is representative of that community. It’s a strong and resilient community.”

Raging waters damaged the back wall of the historic brick powerhouse at Nolichucky Dam.

One Lightbulb

Nolichucky Dam was completed in 1913 by a small regional electric company. When TVA became the area’s power distributor in 1945, it bought the dam.

For families in the area, the dam has been a fixture for generations.

“My grandfather helped build that dam,” said Tony Williams, who was helping out at the Birdwell place.

Frank Iacavelli – who later changed his name to Williams – was a young immigrant from Bari, Italy. A few weeks after his arrival at Ellis Island, he saw a notice in a New York newspaper and traveled to Greene County, Tennessee.

“They were hunting laborers to help build this dam,” Tony Williams said. “He lived in a pup tent on the riverbank while they built the dam.”

Williams and others of his generation remember field trips to the dam as elementary students.

“We went out there and took a tour,” Williams said. “Just about every kid did.”

When it was George Birdwell’s turn, the Nolichucky Dam tour left him breathless – literally – about the effort it takes to generate even 60 watts of electricity.

“There was a display where you pedaled a bike and turned a lightbulb on,” Birdwell said. “I think about being in that old dam and trying to light up one lightbulb.”

Tony Williams, in white shirt at left, joins others lending a hand at the Birdwell house. Williams’ grandfather helped build Nolichucky Dam.

‘At Nature’s Mercy’

Nolichucky generated 10.6 megawatts of power at its peak. TVA stopped producing electricity there in 1972 because the Davy Crockett Reservoir just above the dam was becoming clogged with silt.

With no other dams upstream from Nolichucky, TVA had no leverage over the flow of water reaching the dam.

“There’s really no way to control it,” Dodd said. “In that way it’s different than almost every dam in TVA’s inventory. TVA can handle the other dams by managing the dams as a system. It's difficult to influence Nolichucky, so we’re at nature's mercy as far as how much water it gets.”

That became painfully obvious when the remnants of Hurricane Helene made their way over the mountains of western North Carolina and northeastern Tennessee, bringing rainfall totals well over 20 inches to some areas.

TVA’s upstream gauge got washed out by the rising waters earlier that Friday. It was cause for serious concern: There was no instrument to measure when the water crested.

Dodd’s team dispatched Haynes.

He set out from Knoxville, stopping at a hardware store on his way to pick up a few extra tools for estimating the water level.

By the time he got to Nolichucky about 9:30 p.m., water was already splashing onto the walkway on top of the dam.

TVA Dam Safety engineer Brad Haynes snapped this photo of water covering Nolichucky Dam about 5 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 28.

18,000 Tons of Rock

Drone footage taken later shows water surging over the top of the dam, with a churning maelstrom rushing around the sides. Surveys found the water reached 9.5 feet above the previous record height.

The water demolished a staircase to the old brick powerhouse and blew a hole in the rear wall.

It scoured huge rocks and mountains of earth from the bank.

In the two weeks following the flood, TVA built new roads to access the site, hauling in 900 truckloads of rock – more than 18,000 tons – for riprap to stabilize the riverbank.

And TVA's Decommissioning team mobilized quickly from across the Valley to begin a step-by-step demolition of the old powerhouse, which had become a hazard and was blocking access to the dam.

Demolition of the old powerhouse gets underway.

China and Rosebushes

The days after the flood were a hubbub of activity at the Birdwell place, Still Hollow Farm, named in memory of a relative who was a moonshiner.

An army of helpers in muck boots arrived with shovels, wheelbarrows and even a hydraulic lift to reach the roof, where the chimney had fallen about 18 inches into the home.

There had been 17 feet of water in the house.

The helpers removed a foot of mud from the ground floor and 6 inches from the second story. They carted keepsakes up to the high ground where George Birdwell had watched the deluge. And they began the process of cleaning and drying what could be saved.

Cousin Josh Vinson put a walk board across the gaping hole where the first floor had fallen into the basement. He crept out over the abyss to retrieve china from a cupboard – most of it unbroken.

Neighbor Stacey Davis, who lost his garage and all its contents in the flood, was helping clean furnishings with son Peyton.

Alongside the back door, a few flashes of red from flattened tomato plants glinted through the mud. The helpers were able to dig up the rosebushes planted by Birdwell’s Grandmother Gladys and transplant them to a relative’s home nearby.

Birdwell’s father, Jay Birdwell, who raised cattle and tobacco from the house – and in later years hosted weddings there – looked around and shook his head in wonder.

“You wouldn’t believe the help we’ve had,” he said. “I don’t have a clue who some of these people are. They just stop and pitch in.”

From left, Josh Vinson, Steven Huff and Logan Browne help clear mud.

Lifetime of Memories

Many helpers had a lifetime of memories of the Nolichucky River.

When neighbor Jerry Neas was a little boy, the dam was still generating power.

“They would hold the water back during the night to give them more water to generate,” Neas said. “It made fishing good."

The rhythms of the dam were part of life, Jay Birdwell said. “When I was a boy, you could set your watch by when TVA would turn her loose.”

The farmer was matter-of-fact about the flood.

“Things happen that we can’t control every day,” he said. “I watched that old river my whole life, but I never thought it would do something like that.”

George Birdwell, a boating accident investigator for a Tennessee agency, has seen his share of tragedy.

He, like others, was coming to terms with the losses.

“This old house has a bunch of stories,” he said. “This is just one of them.”

The demolition of the old powerhouse – so close to his childhood fishing and kayaking spots – was poignant too.

“So sad to see it go,” Birdwell said. “But it’s a new chapter for us all.”

Photo Gallery

Kevin Holbrook, TVA senior manager of construction projects, observes work from a highway bridge just downstream from the dam.

An excavator begins demolition work at the powerhouse site.

Dump trucks delivered hundreds of loads of rock to help stabilize the riverbank.

A TVA team heads down to inspect the interior of the old powerhouse.

Old equipment remains from the days when TVA generated electricity at Nolichucky.

Jay Birdwell’s family has occupied Still Hollow Farms for six generations.

The porch at right washed off the Birdwell house and the small bathroom, at left, floated up off the ground and bobbed in the current, tethered by a cord.

The Meadow Creek, about 100 yards from the Birdwell house, is normally a small tributary to the Nolichucky River.

Vinson moves mud away from the house.

Stacey Davis, left, and son Peyton help clean treasured furnishings.

George Birdwell views a photo of a wedding held at the house a month before the flood.

The Birdwell home before and after the flood.

Nolichucky dam was built in 1912-13. Italian immigrant Frank Iacavelli, shown with his wife Cora in this provided photo, was a laborer on the crew.

Floodwaters washed out the stairway to the powerhouse.

A dozer grades the new road to smooth access for heavy equipment.

Crews demolished the powerhouse step by step over several days. 

Powerhouse demolition advances.

Safety personnel stand by on site.

TVA experts return from inspecting the powerhouse interior.

Downstream, a river rescue crew is at the ready.

PHOTO AT TOP OF PAGE: Jay Birdwell’s family home bears a plaque showing it’s on the National Register of Historic Places.