Crews try draining swollen Bruceville-Eddy reservoir that threatens homes (2024)

Crews hired by McLennan County worked with possible storms looming Wednesday to install flexible pipe to drain a swollen reservoir near Bruceville-Eddy that has flooded one home and threatened others.

McLennan County Commissioners Court approved the work on an emergency basis Tuesday, hiring an Ellis County firm to speed the drainage of a Soil Conservation Service reservoir called Cow Bayou Site No. 5. Starting budget for the work is estimated at $50,000.

Moir Watershed Services LLC worked Wednesday to place several hundred feet of 18-inch flexible pipe to siphon water out of the reservoir. The pipe will be positioned to aim the water toward the plunge basin downstream of the dam.

“These are not normal amounts of rainfall that we have been getting,” McLennan County Judge Scott Felton said in a Wednesday email. “We have to be ready to act to help preserve public health and safety.”

The National Weather Service has reported 9.4 inches of rain at Waco Regional Airport so far this month, and the region was under flood and tornado watches through Wednesday night, with 2 to 3 inches of rainfall possible.

Bounded by North Old Bruceville Road to the east, Smith Lane to the north and Lake Shore Drive to the south, the reservoir now extends to cover the northwestern end of Park Lake Drive. Before the recent rains, the lake measured about 1,800 feet from east to west and 1,000 feet from north to south. URJ Greene Family Camp is located about 1,600 feet from the lake at normal height, at the end of Smith Lane.

The lake is about 1.5 miles north of Bruceville-Eddy City Hall.

Rudy Money, who lives next to the reservoir, said it is 44 feet above normal. Money has owned the land for longer than 40 years and lived there for the past 30. Money’s land runs halfway across the dam, while another family owns the land from there around the rest of the dam, he said.

“This is by far and away the highest we have ever seen the lake,” Money said Wednesday.

Frank Johnson, who owns property adjacent to Money and farther away from the dam, placed a $52,000 solar array in the floodplain, but he thought water would never reach it. It was completely covered over the weekend.

Another homeowner who built close to the dam’s emergency spillway, now has water within less than a foot of his house, James Moir, owner of Moir Watershed Services said Wednesday.

In the middle of the reservoir, a stand of trees was partly flooded Monday, and around the far side from Money’s property one house could be seen inundated up to the windows.

When the flexible pipe is positioned the goal is to have water draining at a manageable flow rate, Precinct 1 Commissioner Jim Smith said by phone Tuesday.

“The lake already has one drainage pipe built to drain under the dam as a primary spillway,” Smith said. “We’re going to increase the volume draining from the dam enough to keep the pool height from flooding homes and causing property damage around the lake but not so much that it would cause flooding downstream.”

The resolution commissioners approved Tuesday would also allow the county to add additional drainage to a pond near the Precinct 3 Road and Bridge Equipment Yard on Snider Road near West, and any other body of water in the county that may rise to threaten its emergency spillway, Felton said before Tuesday’s vote.

Cow Bayou Site No. 5 was built in 1957 as a flood control structure by the Soil Conservation Service, a federal agency subsumed into the Natural Resources Conservation Service in 1994. The reservoir on Snider Road was built around the same time.

These are earthen dams and they’re designed to drain within 28 days, Moir said. There are around 50 in McLennan County, 110 in Navarro County and around 40 in Hill County.

Moir said the dam is functioning as designed, but it was not planned to have homes built around it.

“Cow Bayou, this one here, was designed purely for flood control and not for recreation,” Moir said. “When this was built there was nothing around here but the county road, and if it got washed out in heavy rains people could be cut off for weeks.”

Now that homes have been built in the floodplain and next to the emergency spillway, property is being threatened and destroyed by the rising waters.

Some of the watersheds in the county have taxing authorities and other funding mechanisms set up to maintain the dams and other flood control measures, such as Tehuacana Creek Water District and the Brazos River Authority, County Engineer Zane Dunnam said.

“The Cow Bayou Watershed Authority disbanded itself decades ago, so there’s no taxing authority or funding mechanism in place to maintain the flood control structures there,” Dunnam said. “The county budgets around $50,000 per year for maintenance on the flood control structures that don’t have any other maintenance.”

Johnson, who lost a solar array in the recent flooding, said Wednesday that everyone should check all the flood easem*nts and floodplains before buying land or building on it. He hopes that others will learn from what happened to him.