After months of worrying about when access to their homes might be cut off by high waters, residents of Jeremiah Drive in northeast Chatham County are celebrating the initial completion of the elevation of their road to prevent flooding.
A coalition of community members, civic leaders, and engineers at the N.C. Dept. of Transportation worked together to try to make raising the road a priority. Funding was secured through the department’s division that represents Chatham County and the work was done with NCDOT staff rather than a contractor, which kept the project under budget. Earlier this month, NCDOT workers from Randolph County began filling in the 700 feet of Jeremiah Drive that was the “low spot” where flooding occurred.
“The Army Corps worked well with us and expedited the permitting process because of the impending issues,” said Matt Kitchen, district engineer with NCDOT. “We raised it up to get to an elevation that we haven’t seen water since the dam was put in.”
Jeremiah Drive rests near Jordan Lake, which was created 37 years ago by the construction of Jordan Dam to help prevent catastrophic flooding further downstream in the Cape Fear Basin. For the first 36 years, Jeremiah Drive had 50 flooding events in total, but since hurricanes Florence and Michael last September, the road has been under water for at least 70 days in less than a year.
“We’ve looked at [Jeremiah Drive] several times,” Kitchen said. “In this instance — with the increased intensity — it became more of an emergent situation.”
The road is now covered by packed gravel, but will be paved sometime in mid-fall, according to Kitchen. The fill was down while maintaining traffic, as there is only one way in or out for the residents. With limited time and space, the crew “achieved impaction” as best as it could under the circumstances.
“We’re out of harm’s way, but we want to let it settle,” Kitchen said. “That way we know we have a solid product. This was a really good collaborative effort in all jurisdictions.”
The residents seem to agree. In an update from Jeremiah Drive resident Faye Stanley, she praised the work and all those involved in making the repairs happen.
“While it was certainly an adventure, navigating around big machines and dump trucks over the last couple of months, the DOT folks were kind and professional and careful that we could move in and out with no more problem than could be helped,” Stanley wrote. “I often felt that they must hate to see us coming when they were trying to work, but they were never anything other than friendly and helpful.
Thank you to each and every one of them. It may look like just a road to some, but to us it represents freedom and safety.”
Reporter Casey Mann can be reached at CaseyMann@Chathamnr.com.