The elevation change from Mt Mitchell to Lake Lure is nearly a mile. There not a runoff plan that is going to help it unless you move entire streams, which is why the towns are there in the first place. . The water just came too fast. This was a record setting event for the area and may not happen again ever. I spend probably 1/3 of the year in western NC. There’s nowhere for that much water to go.Everyone is boxed in with regulation.
If someone dredges a creek, that creek moves faster. That creek empties into another creek or river. That river into another river and so on.
The thinking is that your dredging or widening of creeks affects everyone down stream. That if you make all of those tributaries efficient, then the Tennessee, Cumberland, Ohio and Mississippi are overwhelmed quicker. On a smaller scale, it's like local zoning calling for retention ponds for new construction.
I own property along both sides of the Ohio River. About five years ago I was informed by the Army Corp of Eng by letter that some county in Northern Kentucky wanted to widen a creek. If I had issue with it, I could come and state my objection at some meeting.
There isn't a happy medium with these people. It's all ornothingall. Just imagine them contacting every land owner from Covington to the Gulf of Mexico to try to get a rise. They've never informed me of any other request upriver since. Either no-one bothers to ask anymore or they don't need my opinion.
The answer was in that tweet above. TVA adding dams and reservoirs ended a lot of heart ache. We rarely see the wild, untamed streams and rivers in the US like we did two weeks ago in WNC. That's some third world shit where there's no plan for runoff.