(Editor’s note: Second in a series)
Imagine Chattanoogans’ surprise when, after engineering reports, a comprehensive study by the U.S. Army’s Corps of Engineers, a recommendation from the secretary of war and a 1939 endorsement by the speaker of the House, funding for the proposed levees to protect Chattanooga and Rossville stalled in the U.S. House Appropriations Committee. The area remained exposed to flooding.
The city leaders’ frustrations recalled another attempt to fund levees. Twenty years earlier, on May 25, 1920, civil engineers W.L. Dabney and Nisbett Wingfield had presented a similar plan to the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce at a cost of about $9.5 million. Wingfield, originally from Chattanooga, led the study, which drew upon his experience in building Augusta’s levees. As he recalled, that city’s leaders argued and hesitated over the expenditure. “Augusta … was troubled with floods and it took the people many years to get down to business and find the remedy.” Not until a flood resulted in more than $3 million in business losses had Augusta’s leaders agreed to appropriate funds. Wingfield cautioned leaders that the risks for continued flooding affecting business, industry and the transportation network of the local economy were real.
Judge Bancroft Murray asked Wingfield why the city could not simply build a canal to “take care of the flood waters,” as suggested by developer C.E. James. Wingfield’s answer was quick — “out of the question, as the cost would be almost as great as the Panama Canal,” and “it would not” stop rapidly rising flood waters. James would later counter with a letter to the Chattanooga Times, questioning the engineers’ dismissal of a proposed canal. “I presume they did their work well, but I hope their estimates are not as far out as their guess on the canal … Neither one of them, nor any other engineer here, knows anything about what the canal proposition will cost until a study is made.” He noted that earlier flood studies had been done where “government engineers” had simply gone “to a high point like Lookout Mountain, Signal Mountain and Missionary Ridge, where they would sit on a rock” and draw sketches, estimating distances and elevations.
Businessman C.S. Steward queried if increasing sewer capacities could lessen the danger by handling surface waters. Wingfield explained that the plan being proposed included about $1 million for two distinct “pumping stations at Citico Creek and Chattanooga Creek” that would aid in lowering the waters “after the proposed floodgates were closed.” Mayor A.W. Chamberlain asked if omitting the Tannery Flat and Alton Park sections of the proposed flood-control plan would substantially lessen costs. Wingfield said that it would cut the anticipated costs by about one-third ($3 million) but would “leave to the mercy of the waters some ten or twelve manufacturing plants.”
Hope surfaced when a line appeared in the proposed 1942 federal budget to fund the majority of Chattanooga’s levee project, with local leaders required to allocate some funds and set aside the needed lands without charge to the Corps of Engineers. However, everything changed in December 1941, when domestic plans, unless critical to national security, were laid aside in the wake of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Four years later, in October 1945, the U.S. War Department published a “Notice of Public Hearing on Flood Protection for Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Rossville, Georgia” to be held in the “Federal Court Room, New Post Office Building” in Chattanooga to “ascertain the present desires of local interests in regard to the flood control works authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1941.” It’s easy to imagine Chattanooga’s leaders shaking their heads and wondering if the third proposal in 25 years might find traction. The expenditure had increased to $16.9 million, with an annual maintenance cost of more than $750,000. Once again the project stalled.
The Jan. 30, 1947, Chattanooga Times headline read: “Families Flee Flood Areas; River Reaches 30.37 Feet.” TVA announced that it “expected to hold the river to less than 33 feet by loosening the gates at Chickamauga Dam and filling the reservoir at Chickamauga Lake … .”
As the river waters spilled into the Alton Park, Citico and Orchard Knob areas, Hamilton County officials reported that Highway 58 was under water near Harrison along with portions of Highway 11 and John Ross Road in East Ridge.
When would the flooding issue be resolved?
Linda Moss Mines, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County historian, teaches a Chattanooga 101 class free to the public at 2 p.m. every third Sunday at the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center. For more information, visit Chattahistoricalassoc.org.