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The Harlan County Fiscal Court provided an update on recent flooding and a water service situation in the Black Mountain Utility District during the court’s February meeting.

Harlan County Judge-Executive Dan Mosley approached the matter at the beginning of the meeting.

“Just a couple of updates relating to the flooding situation we’ve been dealing with,” Mosley said. “We had significant rainfall, it was supposed to be between one and two inches, it ended up being from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, 3.7 inches and an additional inch fell overnight into Sunday morning. I think the total was around 4.9 inches of rain altogether.”

Mosley stated all Harlan County magistrates dealt with flood situations in their districts during the event.

“We had damage county wide to roads and several bridges as well,” Mosley said. “As bad as it was here, we’re very fortunate it was not worse. We’re aware of approximately 30 damage assessments to homes and property that have been reported by citizens. That was as of yesterday (Monday, Feb. 17).”

Flood prone locations were hit hardest.

“There are areas that are flood prone,” Mosley said. “Highway 413 at Baxter, Tremont, Dayhoit, areas like that…they flood every time the river gets to this level.”

The water crested at Baxter at the fifth highest level since the county began recording water levels.

“The Martins Fork at times throughout that process seemed even higher than what we’ve previously experienced, Cloverfork as well,” Mosley said. “There was a lot of noticeable flooding that was occurring in Cloverfork where we had not seen water that high before.”

Mosley said he spoke to the owner of a business located on KY 72 about the flooding.

“In 2020, we had a flood with a higher crest than we did this time,” Mosley said. “But the water at their location was higher than it was in 2020…it certainly was a significant event. We’re still cleaning up.”

Mosley also provided an update on the BMUD water outage situation.

“There’s been a lot of progress made on that,” Mosley said. “I attended the BMUD board meeting earlier this month. They had begun to replace pumps at pump stations that were causing problems by leaking significantly. They had a tremendous amount of water loss in January with broken pipes from the freeze that occurred.”

According to Mosley, the people in Wallins, Molus, and Happy Top communities have experienced more water outages over the last few years than the county had been made aware of.

“We feel that most of that was a direct result of pump failures,” Mosley said. “That problem has been resolved. They’re still working on leak detection, they still have to ramp up staffing, but other than that there has been progress made there.”

In other Fiscal Court activity:

• An agreement for road salt with the city of Benham was approved;
• An agreement with the Leslie County Fiscal Court for road salt was approved;
• The appointment of Michael Scott to the Cumberland Valley Area Development District board was approved for a three-year term expiring Feb. 15, 2028;
• The appointment of Karen Stepp to the Cumberland Tourist and Convention Board was approved for a 3-year term expiring Jan. 1, 2028;
• The court granted permission to advertise for asphalt.