Potomac River Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Warmer Climate In W.Va. Equals More Rainfall And More Floods

Curtis Tate spoke with Nicolas Zegre, an associate professor of forest hydrology at West Virginia University, about what’s behind this trend.

Flood events are becoming more frequent and severe in West Virginia, causing millions of dollars in damage to property, disrupting communities and displacing lives.

Curtis Tate spoke with Nicolas Zegre, an associate professor of forest hydrology at West Virginia University (WVU), about what’s behind this trend.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tate: What makes West Virginia and Appalachia so vulnerable to severe, frequent floods?

Zegre: When we think about floods, in particular West Virginia, we have to think about them two ways. One is what we call a riverine based flood. So the larger rivers that flood when they spill over the stream, the riverbanks onto the floodplain, which of course are normally dry areas. And so when we look at flooding in West Virginia and we see that riverine flooding, there are hot spots in the Eastern Panhandle, where we see a lot of that riverine flooding, and that’s associated with the ridge and valley, the large rivers like the Potomac, that the ridge and valley topography kind of creates these really wide river valleys that provide a floodplain and we certainly have that in other parts of the state. But when we think about hot spots in the state, the Eastern Panhandle, the riverine flooding is a big problem.

But the other type of flooding we’re concerned about in West Virginia is flash flooding. And flash flooding can happen anywhere. It can happen, certainly in our small streams and our heavily dissected headwater valleys where 85 percent of our streams in West Virginia are small streams. And, of course, we know we have people living up and down just about every hollow in West Virginia.

And so we actually have two hot spots, we have a hot spot in the West Fork watershed in that Clarksburg-Bridgeport Harrison County area. And then we also see a flash flooding hot spot kind of central to Kanawha and what we refer to as kind of the southern coalfield counties. Now, that said, flash flooding and riverine flooding does happen everywhere throughout the state. But if we’re thinking about a higher propensity for flash flooding, or for riverine flooding, we do see these emerging trends on where there is a greater probability of them happening.

Tate: So for example, in the 2016 flood disaster in southern West Virginia, was it more the second type?

Zegre: It was actually both. When they started collecting stories of what the 2016 flood looked like, and from the community and the first responder perspectives, and then when we started looking at what the floods look like from a hydrology perspective, what became clear was it was a different type of flood in different parts of the Greenbrier watershed. So around Richwood and Rainelle, for example, that was more a flash flood, a wall of water moving very, very quickly downslope.

Whereas, when you were in the White Sulphur Springs and kind of Lewisburg area, it was more of a riverine flood, where the water, the river level rose and kind of spilled over and filled the wider valley. And what’s interesting, Curtis, is when you start thinking about where the damage was, and vulnerability, and also recovery, we saw very different damage and very different approaches to response and recovery in Rainelle versus White Sulphur Springs. And we can tie that back to the different types of floods. But I should say that, in the case of the 2016 flood, there were a lot of flash floods that routed downstream that also contributed to the larger riverine flood. And so we can have multiple types of floods occurring in the same event, which is going to be related to the topography and the stream channel and what all that looks like.

Tate: What’s driving the heavier rainfall?

Zegre: So heavy rainfalls are the result of a warmer atmosphere. We think of the atmosphere as like a balloon, and if you blow up the balloon in your house in January, and it’s warm inside your house, the balloon is expanded. And if you walk outside, on that cold winter day, that balloon is going to contract, walk back inside to that warm house and then the balloon is going to expand. So that’s what’s happening with warming temperatures in the atmosphere.

With a warmer temperature, the atmosphere expands, which means it can store more water. But with warmer temperatures, there’s more evaporation of water from our soils, in our trees and our rivers and our lakes. And so, more water has been put into the atmosphere and more of that water can be stored in the atmosphere. And once the atmosphere reaches saturation, we have these very heavy intense rainfalls, and so heavy rainfall and air temperature is very clearly related. In fact, for a single one degree temperature increase, a one degree Fahrenheit increase in air temperature, the atmosphere can hold 4 percent more water. And so, as the atmosphere warms, that holds more water, and it creates more rainfall.

Tate: How much does land use, whether commercial, residential or industrial, contribute to the problem?

Zegre: Whether it is, you know, what we would call an old growth forest, or a Walmart parking lot, if you drop eight to 10 inches of rain in a couple of hours, like what was experienced in eastern Kentucky, two summers ago, there’s going to be flooding in it. Our systems just aren’t designed to handle that much water. But land use activities very much affect how quickly water runs off. And so impervious surfaces associated with industrialization, associated with urbanization, and associated with the result of surface mining, all of this routes water more quickly, more water is routed more quickly off that landscape.

And so when we think about how we mitigate these effects of extreme rainfall and flooding, putting our landscape back into forests is a really important part of this conversation. But land use is a really important driver of flooding. But I should also say that, it’s really hard to detect the effects of a single neighborhood or single mine, or a single clear-cut parcel and the effect that, that has on flooding. And so we often think about this, we know how water cycles through the atmosphere and through the earth. And so what happens when you remove forests and remove soils, that water can’t be stored and that water is not removed from runoff, so all of that goes downstream.

A Discussion On The Oldest Town In W.Va. – And How Much It Actually Matters

If you had to bet on one, I would say Shepherdstown was probably founded first, simply because it’s on an important thoroughfare connecting the Shenandoah Valley to the important Delaware ports, where a lot of European migrants, principally Scots Irish and German migrants, were arriving in the 18th century. So it’s likely that these migrants arrived at the banks of the Potomac River in the valley before they arrived in the South Branch Valley. So it’s likely that Shepherdstown was founded earlier.

Both Shepherdstown and Romney lay claim to being the oldest town in West Virginia – but there’s some confusion as to which town is actually correct. Shepherd Snyder spoke to Appalachian historian and Shepherd University professor Benjamin Bankhurst about why the answer is more complicated than it appears.

Snyder: Starting off, I was wondering if you could go ahead and introduce yourself for me.

Bankhurst: Well, thanks for having me on. My name is Benjamin Bankhurst and I’m an associate professor of history here at Shepherd University with a specialization in 18th century Appalachia and the wider Atlantic world.

Snyder: Perfect. So getting into the main focus of this, why do Shepherdstown and Romney both have a claim to the oldest town in West Virginia? What’s the story there?

Bankhurst: Well, firstly, I’ll say, I’m not really vested in who it is, whether Romney or Shepherdstown is the oldest town in West Virginia. I think what we need to remember here is that the debate centers around which town was chartered first, not which town was founded first. And it’s difficult in both cases to come up with a concrete founding for each town because each town was founded as a part of a longer process of migration, which European migrants filtered into the southern backcountry across the early decades of the 18th century.

It wasn’t chartered first, however. This is the debate, right? So let’s talk about this. Effectively, what happened is that each town was chartered on the same day, December 23, 1762. And both towns had gone through a long process in which they had to petition the Virginia House of Burgesses to charter the towns. This would result in somebody, or the community, presenting a petition to the Burgesses saying that they wanted to found a town. Then this would go to committee, the petition would receive a second reading in the House of Burgesses, it would be passed to the council. And finally, the governor would then sign off if the legislature had approved the chartering of the town. And effectively what happened is the governor signed off on the charters for both towns in one long session. And there’s numerous other towns that were chartered at the same time. Charlottesville, for instance, was chartered on the same day. It’s just that he happened to sign the paper for Romney and Hampshire County first… and then they broke for lunch! And then Shepherdstown, what was then known as Mecklenburg, was chartered immediately after the lunch session. So technically, yes, Romney, you’re correct! Romney was chartered first, a few hours earlier than Shepherdstown.

Snyder: But there’s still that debate from the Shepherdstown side.

Bankhurst: Yeah. But again, it focuses on when petitions were put forward, when they were first heard. And, again, often I think this debate is muddied because of the fact that people aren’t necessarily clear on this distinction between a town founding and a town’s charter.

Snyder: Now, from what I can tell from the little background I do have, Shepherdstown does argue that it is older sometimes, as far as chartering goes, because its bill was read for the third time before Romney’s bill was. So there’s that kind of wrinkle in it.

Bankhurst: Yeah, exactly. It’s parliamentary politics, isn’t it? You know, whose bill was read first, who put forward the petition earlier? And then, finally, whose town was chartered by the governor first. Those are the parameters of the debate.

But now that we have that boring stuff out of the way, let’s focus on what’s actually exciting about this debate!

Let’s think about what the charter of Romney and Shepherdstown tell us about a period of dramatic change in western Virginia. Let’s think about what they have in common. Both Romney and Shepherdstown are founded on the Potomac River. Romney on the South Branch of the Potomac and Shepherdstown on Packhouse Ford, on the Potomac River in the Shenandoah Valley. So both are river towns. Secondly, they’re both on major thoroughfares. Romney’s on a road that connects the mountain communities to Winchester, on what will become known as the northwestern roads, or the northwestern turnpike. And Shepherdstown is located on one of the great splinter routes of the Shenandoah Wagon Road, the Philadelphia Road, which crosses the Potomac River at Packhouse Ford just on the outskirts of town. So both are on major overland thoroughfares, and both are river crossings. So they’re geographically very similar.

Secondly, let’s think about the moment in time in which these two communities are chartered. They’re chartered in the midst of an ongoing conflict, the Seven Years War, which erupts on the Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiers in the middle of the 18th century. It’s this great war for empire to see which European power – France or Great Britain – will control the North American interior. And so we have these two strategically important towns founded in the midst of conflict.

Snyder: Does that have anything to do with the makeup of how those towns were settled at all?

Bankhurst: Yeah, absolutely. That’s an excellent question. So let’s think about how communities were organized in Virginia, east of the mountains before the Seven Years War. Before the Seven Years War, Virginia was known as a diffuse society and economy. Because of the rise of tobacco monocrop agriculture and the unique geography of the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia doesn’t establish many urban centers. People don’t cluster together in eastern Virginia. Rather, we see the rise of what will later become known as the great plantation house, we see the rise of enslavement and the rise of monocrop agriculture for export to European markets. So within that context, there’s no need to devise towns, there’s no need to found towns. These towns do emerge interim, and belatedly as an afterthought at important junctures, or where market towns might emerge.

But that’s very different from what we see here. In the midst of the Seven Years War, town founding in Virginia takes a dramatic turn as represented by both these communities. People came together for protection, and that’s certainly true of Romney, Romney is on the fringes of a Virginia settlement. It’s isolated, it is prone to Shawnee raids. So people come together and form a fort and they cluster for protection.

The same is true in the Shenandoah Valley. Winchester becomes very important because it’s the site of Fort Loudoun, which houses the Virginia Regiment. In the late 1750s, anywhere between 100 and 200 paid troops were stationed in Fort Loudoun. These people are paid by the government. That means there’s cash, suddenly. Their presence leads to the growth of attendant industries. These young men have to be fed, they have to be clothed, they have to be entertained. So that the establishment of Fort Loudoun leads to Winchester becoming an important central place. These towns all emerge as a way of servicing the needs of the Virginia regiment in Fort Loudoun. And so we see this sudden desire for these communities to be incorporated. They want incorporation as a consequence of this war.

Snyder: Talking about the charter, again, I know you mentioned this is the least interesting tidbit of the whole thing in your eyes. But I do want to get your thoughts and opinions on why you think this matters to some folks from Romney, or some folks from Shepherdstown. Why is it important today, and what’s your perspective on that?

Bankhurst: Well, I’ve thought about this a lot. You know, there’s certain things in the history of West Virginia we’re very keen to establish precedence for. Think about the Battle of Point Pleasant. Historically, the Daughters of the American Revolution had argued that the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774, occurring when it did, before the major battles of the early American Revolution, was the first battle of the American Revolutionary War. They needed to give that battle that sort of mythology. Similarly, here in Shepherdstown, we talk about James Rumsey and the invention of the steamboat. We argued that it was James Rumsey, not (New York inventor) Robert Fulton, who invented the steamboat. It had to happen in West Virginia first. And I think our obsession as a state with these moments in which we can argue that it happened here first is a reflection of the fact that we’re actually a new state, right? We were founded in 1863! And we have to distinguish ourselves.

Snyder: It’s kind of a ‘chip on our shoulder’ type of thing.

Bankhurst: Well, perhaps, but I think it’s indicative of our relative newness, if that makes sense. We have to mark our own identity apart from Virginia apart from this distinct identity in the colonial period. And I think this is a reflection of that. The fact that both Shepherdstown and Romney are obsessed with this question, I think, is indicative of how we see ourselves in our state. But interestingly, on the same day that both Romney and Shepherdstown are charted, Charlottesville’s charted! And let’s be frank, it’s first, it beats Shepherdstown, in the order in which the governor signs off on the charter. But we don’t really discuss that, it doesn’t really matter, because we’re obsessed with defining these communities as West Virginia, as opposed to Virginia. So we’re kind of reading back West Virginia in history into the story of western Virginia, if that makes sense.

Snyder: Before we end things off here, did you have any other interesting tidbits of information or any other just kind of relevant info we should know?
Bankhurst: What I actually would say is that, regarding this debate, what’s interesting is how this the features of shared by both of these sounds, perhaps we should think about them within not necessarily within the context of, ‘who’s the oldest charter community in West Virginia,’ perhaps we should think about them as emerging within a specific regional context, the greater Shenandoah Valley, that they’re co-chartering on the same day. And the fact that they share all of these things in common, their war experience there. Perhaps that should lead us to think about them kind of as sister communities, not as sort of competitors, in that they emerge with a very similar ferment. So I guess that’s what I would say. We’re sort of asking a redundant question when actually, we should emerge together.

Shepherdstown Battlefield Getting $492,000 Grant To Preserve Farmland

The Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board will use the funding to preserve 149 acres that played a role in the lesser-known battle that took place days after Antietam in September 1862.

The National Park Service is giving a $492,000 grant to preserve farmland that was part of the Civil War battle of Shepherdstown.

The Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board will use the funding to preserve 149 acres that played a role in the lesser-known battle that took place days after Antietam in September 1862.

Confederate troops fought off the Union Army at Shepherdstown, which was then in Virginia.

When they returned to the Potomac River to push north into Pennsylvania the following year, West Virginia had become a state, and a part of the Union.

The preserved acreage will be protected from development but still produce hay and alfalfa.

“The conservation easements this funding will be used for will also ensure that farmers with land in the area can continue to earn a living and help feed America while protecting a piece of American history that is our duty to remember,” said U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia.

Another 2023 Battlefield Land Acquisition Grant of $927,000 was awarded to the Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission to preserve another 122 acres along the Potomac where most of the battle took place.

Potomac River Cleaner Than It Was A Decade Ago, Report Says

The Potomac Conservancy gave the river a B grade on its “Potomac River Report Card.” That’s a step up from a report 10 years ago.

The Potomac River is cleaner than it used to be, according to a new report. But there is still work to be done.

The Potomac Conservancy gave the river a B grade on its “Potomac River Report Card.” That’s a step up from a report 10 years ago. It’s also a slight improvement from the B-minus grade the conservancy’s last report granted in 2020.

The improvement is in large part because of a sharp reduction in river pollutants like nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment over the past three decades, according to measurements from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program.

Wildlife is also coming back to habitats in and around the Potomac, with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources reporting a return in abundance of American shad.

Runoff pollution, deforestation and climate change were noted as the top threats the Potomac River currently faces against restoration. According to the report, habitats along the river are not recovering as quickly as projected. That means restoration efforts likely won’t reach certain benchmarks by 2025, a goal set by the Chesapeake Executive Council in 2009.

West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle includes about 100 miles of the Potomac River, from Hampshire County to its confluence with the Shenandoah in Harpers Ferry.

Barrier Removal Opening Potomac River To Fish

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is set to remove 17 fish passage barriers along Potomac River headwaters throughout West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia. It will help aquatic species like brook trout and American eel travel more freely across the region.

Removing barriers like culvert pipes or obsolete dams helps restore local ecosystems, but can also lessen the risk of flooding and help restore local fisheries and fishing communities.

Shannon Estenoz, assistant secretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, said restoration projects like these are some of the most immediately rewarding for river ecosystems.

“When climate change poses threats to ecosystems, the healthier they are, the more likely they are to be resilient against those changes,” Estenoz said. “So all of those benefits combined make the return on investment enormous.”

Two projects reconnecting more than five miles of habitat have been completed since September, including replacing a failing culvert within the Savage River State Park in western Maryland with a fish-friendly passage. A culvert in West Strait Creek in Virginia was also removed.

“It’s a good example of not just removing infrastructure, sometimes you have to keep the infrastructure there, because folks use it, they either use it for public access to a park or we use it for flood mitigation, risk management,” Estenoz said about the Savage River project. “But by putting in a modern structure or structures, we can redesign it in a way that fish can actually use it.”

An expected 195 miles of habitat are set to be reconnected to the Potomac River by the time the project is finished.

The regional project is part of the National Fish Passage Program, which received $38 million in funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in April. The removal of the Cheat River Albright Power Station Dam, which closed and was deemed obsolete in 2012, was also funded as a result of the national program.

Another $38 million towards the National Fish Passage Program was announced earlier this month.

C&O Canal Prepares To Remove Second Barge From Potomac River

Contractors at the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park are preparing this week to remove the second of two construction barges from the Potomac River.

This comes after heavy rains last month loosened the two barges from their moorings, sending them floating down the Potomac River in the Eastern Panhandle.

The contractors working with the park said it will take at least four weeks to remove the larger of the two barges, which is lodged near Harpers Ferry at the Potomac’s former Dam Number 3.

The smaller barge was pulled from the river last month after being stopped north of Shepherdstown. Plans to recover a small excavator and other equipment that fell from this barge and into the river are also being made.

The equipment was part of a restoration project at McMahon’s Mill in Williamsport, Maryland. A release from the national park said the area of the Armory Trail Canal near the extraction site in Harpers Ferry will be closed off and warns the public to not approach the barge while the process is taking place.