{"id":56201,"date":"2025-07-11T06:59:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T06:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/56201\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T06:59:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T06:59:19","slug":"mebane-nc-lake-michael-dam-draws-concerns-for-north-carolina-homeowners-after-breach-from-chantal-governor-stein-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/56201\/","title":{"rendered":"Mebane NC | Lake Michael Dam draws concerns for North Carolina homeowners after breach from Chantal, Governor Stein says"},"content":{"rendered":"

MEBANE, N.C. (WTVD) — Tropical Storm Chantal is on tap to be an expensive storm to recover from, according to state officials.<\/p>\n

Four counties across North Carolina<\/a> issued states of emergency. In Alamance County, water at Lake Michael went over the dam and threatened the lives of people living in the community that sits at the bottom of the lake.<\/p>\n

“Sunday night, we got a knock on the door saying the dam was in imminent danger of collapsing,” said Dale Cowell. “But, there was no place to go because all the streets were flooding. So we went up to the clubhouse, but after a few hours there, I said I’m going to take my chances and went home.”<\/p>\n

The Cowells were fortunate. No homes in the community were destroyed by the slight dam breach at Lake Michael, but officials say nine homes had to be evacuated.<\/p>\n

The Mebane Assistant City Manager, Preston Mitchell, said the water treatment plant that they jointly own with the City of Graham experienced flooding.<\/p>\n

“Currently, we cannot produce potable drinking water. We’re asking citizens to use as little or zero use of water as possible in the meantime,” said Mitchell.<\/p>\n

He said two neighborhoods in North Mebane are under a boil water advisory because a water main was also damaged.<\/p>\n

The Tropical Storm<\/a> caused widespread flooding and left one man dead here. Town officials said his body was found inside a car southeast of Mebane along Jim Minor Road and Calloway Drive.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Governor Josh Stein surveyed the damage at Lake Michael.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“Thank goodness this spillway did not break. The consequences would have been devastating,” said Governor Josh Stein.<\/p>\n

Engineers said they stabilized the partial breach at Lake Michael with rocks. They brought in a pump to the site to help lower water levels quickly.<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO<\/strong> | Chantal aftermath: Families, businesses across central NC start recovery; 4th storm death confirmed<\/a><\/p>\n

“We saw a ten-foot rise in water levels in just a couple of hours during the storm. It takes a long time to pump that back down,” said Austin Spencer, senior engineer with Schnabel.<\/p>\n

With rain in the forecast for later this week, Governor Stein expressed concern.<\/p>\n

“There’s more weather to come. There’s rain coming later this week. This ground is fully saturated. We hope and pray it’s not a heavy storm. Folks need to be on their toes,” said Stein.<\/p>\n

WATCH | Gov. Stein’s full update after touring Lake Michael Dam<\/p>\n

Governor Josh Stein visited Alamance and Orange Counties to survey storm damage caused by Tropical Storm Chantal and to thank first responders for their work to keep people safe.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2025 WTVD-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEBANE, N.C. (WTVD) — Tropical Storm Chantal is on tap to be an expensive storm to recover from,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":56202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[41251,210,517,14951,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-56201","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-41251","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-priority","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114833310906483353","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}