NC Land – The Challenges: Landslides

Mountain lots afford spectacular views. The trick is keeping your house where you built it.

Sobering reading can be found here https://deq.nc.gov/about/divisions/energy-mineral-land-resources/north-carolina-geological-survey/geologic-hazards/landslides

From the above web site.

Now, we won’t be building on a debris fan like this apartment developer did. But will we be building in that yellow-bordered area? That’s no fun either.

To determine our fate, and if we should build, or cut our losses, the State of North Carolina, after 5 people were killed in a landslide in Macon County in 2004, (https://files.nc.gov/ncdeq/Energy%20Mineral%20and%20Land%20Resources/Geological%20Survey/Landslide_reports/SEFOP_07_PksCrk_Guidebook_Final_R1.pdf ) ordered “landslide maps” to be created for 19 high risk counties in the state.

Four counties got maps before the NC legislature pulled the plug on the project, apparently due to howls from the real estate industry about lost sales from the information on the maps.

NC cut landslide hazard program, despite dangers

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/latest-news/article212253189.htm

Caveat emptor!

Our home site(tm) is perched on a ridge, so as long as nobody removes dirt/rock from the base of the mountain, and as long as we don’t overload the land with water from sprinklers, driveway runoff, septic tank fields, or experience torrential rains, we should be okay.

Needless to say, we will be visiting the roads downhill from us, looking for old debris fans. We are also consulting the excellent maps for our county, one of the lucky four counties to get maps, though oddly, not available on the county’s web site anymore.

https://files.nc.gov/ncdeq/Energy%20Mineral%20and%20Land%20Resources/Geological%20Survey/Assorted%20maps/GHMS_1_DSH_technical_layout.pdf
https://files.nc.gov/ncdeq/Energy%20Mineral%20and%20Land%20Resources/Geological%20Survey/Assorted%20maps/GHMS_1_SINMAP_technical_layout.pdf
https://files.nc.gov/ncdeq/Energy%20Mineral%20and%20Land%20Resources/Land%20Resources/landslides/NCGS_GHMS_1_Plate_1_SMSMD.pdf

It appears our property is not in a risk area, but there’s a mountain west of us that is, and the debris field will run through the valley below us (which has houses and a church or two.)

The other option being we walk away from this and find some nice flat land without views. That seems to be the wiser thing to do. Not that I’m prone to wise decisions.

NC Land pt 1 – The Project

We have a little piece of land in Western North Carolina. It’s been a few years since we’ve been on it, and even longer since we worked on it.

Here are some “before” photos from 2003.

The land straddles a ridge, with most of it on the south side. The north side is full of ferns.

A year later we cut down some trees for the “home site”, and even got a septic permit (good for 5 years.)

I wonder what those logs look like now?
I wonder what this spot looks like now.

So we’ll be back later this year. We are waiting for a good freeze to kill the chiggers first.