Months after Hurricane Sally, residents still waiting for repairs to new Willowbrook Dam

Escambia County is looking for funding to repair a new dam that was finished just months before Hurricane Sally severely damaged it in September.

County staff are in an application process to receive funding to repair and, perhaps, make improvements to the Willowbrook Dam, which is located just off Chemstrand Road and Orby Street.

During the hurricane, water overtopped the dam after debris clogged its stormwater drainage system, and water washed out the surrounding dirt and grass that supported the dam.

"It was pristine. Right before the hurricane, it got finished up," said Robert McCracken, manager of the Construction Management Division in the county's Office of Engineering and Construction. "Hurricane Sally made a big mess of it, unfortunately. But there's too much water. There was no way. It was a catastrophic event."

Construction on the $1.2 million Willowbrook Dam began in mid-2019, according to county documents. Back then, the county stepped in to help residents around Willowbrook Lake replace the dam after they drained it in 2013 to make repairs but a massive rain event in 2014 rendered it too expensive for them to repair.

The lake helps set the water levels in the area and filters stormwater before it goes under Chemstrand Road into Clear Creek and the Escambia River Watershed.

"(The dam is) controlling that watershed, controlling that area, by allowing it to set the water level. Once (the water level) comes up — if you get an inch of rain, 2 inches of rain — it just fills up and it spills out over at a certain elevation. That's it," McCracken said.

McCracken said while dams should normally have a lifespan of about 50 years, the new Willowbrook dam didn't necessarily have any design errors. Rather, floods like the one in 2014 and destructive storms like Hurricane Sally, are rare events.

"We expect some failures. That one failed big time, not due to any kind of errors in building. It was just too much. The volume of water, that thing just couldn't handle it," McCracken said. 

Early estimates show it will take between $215,000 and $220,000 for the engineering, permitting and repair work needed to bring the dam back to its previous state. It likely will take another $150,000 to make improvements to the design, such as concrete blocks to stabilize the sides of the dam to prevent them from washing out again.

The county is applying to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS, for partial funding for the repair work. If that's unsuccessful, McCracken said staff can apply to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for help.

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The organizations likely would cover up to 75% of the costs, if eventually approved. But it remains unknown if they also will sign off on paying for improvements to the design or agree that the cost-benefit analysis of paying for a new dam works out.

"We do know we need to fix it and we're moving forward with that," McCracken said. "We need to move forward with getting some funds to get this thing repaired."

It's been a long road to a new dam for the residents who live on Willowbrook Lake, which now looks more like a marsh or swamp. Randy Fiveash, who lives closest to the dam, said he believed the new dam was built so it wouldn't fail during storms.

"It obviously didn't work," Fiveash said. "This has been going on since, what, 2014? Since the flood. It has been going off and on since then."

The look of the lake is much different than it was once, when it was fit for his daughters and nephews to swim in. The house was bought by his parents in the 1970s and about 15 years ago, the water was almost clear, he said.

Fiveash said he's concerned about diminished property values for the neighborhood as well as snakes that have come to live in the low waters.

The lack of a dam also can be a quality of life issue. Fiveash said most of the houses on the lake previously had docks, before various storms took them out, and sprinkler systems to help their lawns grow. Once the new dam was finished before Sally, the lake wasn't around long enough to even restore the sprinkler systems, he said.

"We just want them to get it replaced to where it will not go out again. That seems to be hard to do," Fiveash said.

During Hurricane Sally, Fiveash said he watched as water crawled up into his yard and likely totally overtook the new dam.

"My thoughts right (then were), 'Hey, it's holding up!' because you can't see the back side of it. Two hours later, when you walked up and looked down the road you go, 'Oh, it didn't do so well,'" he said.

Fiveash said he hopes the county will just be able to repair the dam and the neighbors will be able to have a new lake soon.

"A lot of people see it driving up and down the road. It would be nice to us if they would've at least filled it up for Christmas so we would've had a pretty lake for Christmas but, no, they left us the mud hole up here," Fiveash said.

Madison Arnold can be reached at [email protected] and 850-435-8522.