AP&L's damage control: the May 20 flooding of Lake Catherine resulted in millions of dollars of damages as AP&L's credibility, competence is questioned.

AP&L's Damage Control

This spring, "an act of God," as Arkansas Power and Light officials like to say, dumped up to 13 inches of rain in less than 24 hours into the area near and around the eastern end of Lake Hamilton on Saturday night, May 19. The unprecedented torrential rains generated the spectacular sight of Hot Springs' Central Avenue turned into a raging river sweeping automobiles to one side as it made its way south, emptying into Lake Hamilton and pushing against Carpenter Dam that holds the lake in place.

The next morning after the rains had stopped, Lake Catherine's shoreline residents, located directly downstream from Carpenter Dam, had sustained massive flood damages ranging from $20 million to $80 million, according to one attorney's estimate: hundreds of homes, some valued at more than $250,000, had been flooded; Carpenter Dam bridge, a steel-and-concrete bridge a half-mile beneath the dam, was ripped away leaving behind a mangled wreck of steel. The lake had risen 27 feet in some sections waterlogging and washing away people's homes, none of which were eligible for flood insurance because of county regulations.

In stark contrast to Lake Catherine's troubles, Hamilton's waters rose less than four feet and no major damage was recorded.

Now nearly two months later, AP&L's credibility is in tatters among many Lake Catherine residents as a vocal majority believes that it was AP&L's operation of Carpenter Dam - not God - that unleashed the flood waters that did them in. Specifically, they say a 45-foot wall of water created when AP&L threw open the flood gates early Sunday morning mowed down everything in its path. Many even believe in a conspiracy theory that less well-to-do Lake Catherine was flooded to spare the more prestigious Lake Hamilton.

"They just unleashed a tidal wave," says Parker Dozhier, whose Dohzier's Bait Shop and Rainbow Landing located less than a mile downstream from Carpenter Dam was demolished by the early morning flood waters. "My business is ruined. It's a miracle no one was killed."

AP&L has repeatedly denied mishandling the flood waters, but that hasn't stopped two class-action lawsuits from being filed against the utility, with a third on its way. The local newspaper, the Hot Springs Sentinel Record, has been boiling in recent months with angry letters from washed out residents.

Anyway you cut it, it's a public relations nightmare for AP&L and its parent, $3.7-billion Entergy Corp., that will probably go on for years in the public eye under the continuing spotlight of litigation.

Telling The Truth

High on the 30th floor of TCBY Tower in Little Rock in one of the state's prestige office locations, AP&L VP Charles Kelly, as head of corporate communications, has handled a stream of phone calls since the May 20 flood. Many of Kelly's callers are incensed and overwhelmed with the loss of their homes and are seeking answers from AP&L.

"No company can exist long without the goodwill of its customers," Kelly says of the anti-AP&L sentiment generated from the flood. The Carpenter Dam operators did the best they could under the unique circumstances and would handle the situation the same way again, Kelly says.

"We were victims, too," Kelly says, although he stresses losing plant equipment can't compare to losing a home. AP&L suffered flood damage of more than $2 million to a high voltage substation at Jones Mill near Remmel Dam at the foot of Lake Catherine, the Remmel Dam powerhouse, and the cooling water intake.

A conspiracy theory that has AP&L deliberately choosing to damage its own equipment to lessen flooding on Lake Hamilton is "absurd," Kelly says. "It's difficult for me to believe that an objective person would believe that."

Mike Bush, AP&L district manager in Hot Springs and a company employee for 24 years, reiterates Kelly's statements. "We did not cause the flood," he says, stressing that Remmel and Carpenter Dams, both built in the early part of this century, are not designed for flood control. "Our lakes are absolutely, capital N-O-T, not, flood control projects."

Bush's office has also been beseiged by phone calls from residents about the flooding, many of them blaming the utility for the disaster. "I just tell them the truth," Bush says. "I am about so sympathetic that I cry for the people involved."

Hoping in part to quell the rising tide of what it saw as misinformation, AP&L issued a four-page fact sheet in late June detailing the company's actions on the night of the flooding. Varying accounts of AP&L's operations at Carpenter and Remmel Dam continue to be the crux of the issue. Depending upon whose version you believe, early the morning of May 20, AP&L operators of the dam:

a) successfully managed the steadily rising waters by gradually raising the gates and, in a stressful situation, disbursed water downstream to Lake Catherine in a prudent fashion under the circumstances, or;

b) unleashed an explosive tidal wave of water sometime around 2:30 a.m. in a panicked action, either because they weren't prepared, or they weren't thinking straight about the consequences, or;

c) (if you like conspiracy theories) acted on a decision made in reaction to the 1982 flood which damaged Lake Hamilton. This theory pits rich Hamilton residents against poorer Lake Catherine ones, and includes speculation that Gov. Bill Clinton's mother called to ask him to order AP&L to get rising flood waters out of her yard (She did call the governor she says, but it was on May 18, the day before the flooding, and only to tell her son she wouldn't be at her lakeside home if the waters rose.)

The 1982 Flood

The conspiracy theory got its start on Dec. 3, 1982.

On that day Lake Hamilton's waters rose as high as seven feet above normal after 10 inches of winter rain unexpectedly fell in a 24-hour period. Hamilton's lakeside residences and businesses suffered widespread damage from the rising waters.

Lake Catherine, in contrast, emerged relatively unscathed in 1982. The flood waters rose only half of this year's levels and most homes escaped with little or no damage.

Just like this spring, an AP&L spokesman in 1982 declared the event "an act of God." What wasn't an act of God - and outraged some Hamilton residents - was AP&L's decision that year not to drawn Lake Hamilton's winter water level down the customary five feet from 400 feet above sea level to 395. AP&L and the state Game and Fish Commission were purposely manipulating the normal draw down in an experiment to increase the number of striped bass in the lake. They hadn't planned on the flood.

Letters to the Sentinel-Record in 1982 from angry residents reasoned that if the lake had been at its customary winter level, the flood waters would have only risen two feet above normal summer heights, causing minimal damage. One resident said AP&L's continuing disclaimers that the lack of a winter draw down didn't magnify the flood damage were an insult to the intelligence of the community.

This flood season it's Lake Catherine's turn to be mad.

One of the angriest letters sent this spring comes from Parker Dozhier. Reprinted at length in the Sentinel-Record it chronicles what he believes happened the night of May 19-20 at Carpenter Dam. "We'll sacrifice those bastards down at Lake Catherine to spare Lake Hamilton," Dozhier says of AP&L's thingking.

Dozhier claims when a panicked AP&L crew released its "tidal wave" flood waters rushed through his parents' home more than 200 feet from the river bank. Dozhier's parents had already been evacuated, but a woman living in a nearby rented mobile home 300 feet from the river was forced to flee for her life, climbing on top of the trailer. The frightened woman perched on a chair and yelled for help in the early morning darkness as the waters rose above the top of the mobile home and swirled beneath her feet.

Dozhier is a fur broken for the Canada-based Hudson Bay Co. and writes for a trapping publication. He lives alone and carries a bit of the air of the backwoods trapper in his mannerisms. Right now he's determined to trap AP&L.

"We're going to take control of this dam away from AP&L," he says. Dozhier contacted Steve Boynton, a Washington, D.C., attorney, who visited Hot Springs, and spoke to a gathering of over 200 Lake Catherine residents in June. Boynton expects to file a lawsuit listing individual claims against AP&L for damages. "We have a half-dozen incidents of active, as well as passive negligence," Boynton says of his case findings. "It was certainly inept."

Denying Liability

Clark Mason and Skip Davidson of the Davidson Law Firm in Little Rock have filed the two class-action lawsuits in the case, one each in federal and circuit court. Davidson has tangled with AP&L's attorneys before, successfully winning a liability case involving a concrete supplier.

"AP&L denied liability (then). Totally denied liability," Davidson says. In the Lake Catherine flooding, Davidson believes they will try the same approach. "I don't think they are going to own up to their responsibility."

Davidson and Mason are straight-forward, Little Rock lawyer types and share none of Dozhier's backwoods roughness. Yet they have reached much the same conclusions about the rapidly rising flood waters.

Together they have interviewed over 25 Lake Catherine residents that suffered flood damage and Mason and Davidson say all the residents tell the same consistent story of flood waters rising rapidly between the hours of 2:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. "We're talking about in a matter of minutes," Davidson says of the lake's surge above its already flooded level. "AP&L didn't react until it was too late."

AP&L has already answered some of the Davidson case allegations by producing a Special Warranty Deed given AP&L in 1947 that it claims allows it to flood all of the Lake Catherine property of Eugene, Donna and Dennis Carvin, the plaintiffs in the circuit court class-action case. the blanket flooding agreement was attached to the property in 1947.

"We don't think anyone has the right to disregard the property and loss of any individual, no matter how large a company they may be," Mason says.

The FERC Investigation

On June 14, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which licenses Carpenter and Remmel Dam, asked AP&L to turn over complete records of what happened that night. Those records will include all dam operations, water levels, and communications and should begin to answer many of the questions Lake Catherine residents have raised.

But for many lake residents answers won't bring back what they've lost. Gerald Sligh, 50, is a retired heating and air conditioning contractor who has lived on the lake for 20 years. His $90,000 house had water up to the tops of the windows the morning of May 20. The damage is estimated at $63,000.

Sligh says when the waters began rapidly rising sometime around 2:30 a.m., he and his wife fled the house as fast as they could. "It was coming up like you wouldn't believe," he says. "Son, I'm telling you we were running for our lives."

Troubled by health problems, Sligh has no interest in signing a low-interest loan to rebuild his house. Instead he says he will try to salvage whatever he can. He adds: "I had my house paid for. A hell of a good life."

PHOTO : THE FLOOD OF 1990: The night of May 19, downtown Hot Springs' Central Avenue turned into a raging torrent when approximately 13 inches of rain fell within a 24-hour period.

PHOTO : TOUGH PR JOB: AP&L district manager in Hot Springs Mike Bush has been beseiged by telephone calls from Lake Catherine residents whose homes were flooded on May 20.