Getting around Boiling Spring Lakes is going to be a little more complicated. The Brunswick County town announced that a portion of E Boiling Spring Road will close for the “foreseeable future.” And while that may impact some commutes, the reason for the closure is to help the town return to its former glory days.
You see, the reason for the closure is the start of a dam reconstruction project that, if successful, will help water return to the now bone dried lakes.
Once upon a time, the town featured a whopping total of 50 lakes, with five sanctioned for swimming, and one sanctioned for water skiing, jet skis and pontoon boats The largest, simply known as “Big Lake” measured a total of 275 acres and was 2.5 miles at its widest point with more than 10 miles of shoreline. Back in those days people flocked to the area, not only for recreation, but to live. Surrounding the Big Lake is a number of private, custom residences.
The houses are still there, but the water is gone.
In 2018 Hurricane Florence stole water from Boiling Spring Lakes. The storm overpowered four different dams, causing them to breach and prompting the water to escape. It has yet to return.
You can see the difference in these two images taken from the Boiling Spring Lakes Facebook Page. The above image shows folks kayaking in a portion of the Big Lake sometime before 2018. The lower picture shows city leaders standing on the lake floor, breaking ground on the repair projects.
But now there is a plan to get the town back to its glory days. It starts with fixing the broken dams. In the most recent elections voters approved a $20 million bond referendum for the repairs and the federal government is kicking in an additional 14 million. Those funds are still short of the total estimated cost of repairs by nearly $25 million.
Still, even if not all the money is in hand, the town is proceeding with the repairs. The closing of E. Boiling Spring Road will allow crews to work on the first round of repairs to one of the dams.
Altogether the repair work is expected to cost $52 million dollars, with the work being complete and the water returning by 2027 or 2028.