LITTLE RIVER-ACADEMY - Ronnie White is rumbling down a Bell County gravel road in his river buggy, an open-top, four-wheel drive Chevy Tracker he shifts without using the clutch. River rocks the size of golf balls and softballs ride on the dash, souvenirs gathered from the Little River by his 3-year-old grandson, Scout.
White grew up fishing and hunting on the river in the 1940s and ’50s, helped his father herd cattle out of the river bottom before floods. After a 1980s flood event, he dove into the river, hooked a chain to a submerged automobile, and pulled the car out. This spring, he gave away his youngest daughter at an outdoor wedding ceremony on their family campground situated on the riverbank.
White parks his river buggy, and with surprising agility for a man in his mid-60s, he scurries down the steep, sandy bank. He points to the 15- and 20-foot cliffs above, and skeletons of cottonwood trees lying in the river below. The brown, muddy water ripples as it floats past tree limbs bobbing in the current. To demonstrate how banks and trees cave in after weeks of heavy flow - when floodgates below the two dams are closed, and the river level drops - he lifts his hands over his head and flings them toward the ground.
“It goes like this - WHOOSH - like flushing a commode,” White said. “Here’s all these heavy trees and dirt, and they slide right down.”
Several miles upstream, Sidney Kacir operates a 100-acre organic pecan orchard on the Little River. His family has owned land along the river for about 75 years. Over the course of almost four decades, he said he’s lost fences, trees, cattle and more than 10 acres of riverfront property to erosion. Kacir agrees with White: When the river level drops, walls of sand crash into the water below.
“It gets the banks all spongy. So when they shut it off you’ll think a supersonic airplane went over … because for miles away you can hear those banks caving in,” the former Temple municipal judge said. “It sounds like a jet airplane went through the sound barrier.”
Still further upstream, Bell County commissioner Richard Cortese and his father, Vince, have farmed and ranched along the Little River at the confluence of the Lampasas and Leon rivers for more than a quarter century.
The younger Cortese addresses the phenomenon of sloughing riverbanks. “You want to know what it sounds like?”
Cortese quickly drops to the ground like he’s doing pushups. He kicks the edge of the cliff. A watermelon-sized dirt clod breaks free and crashes with a heavy thud into the river 20 feet below. Water the color of chocolate milk splashes up.
The senior Cortese has saved an old aerial photograph of the area they farm. He draws a line where the bank is now, compared to where it used to be. Father and son discuss how many acres have been washed away - between 15 and 20, they estimate.
“That’s a lot of dirt going down to the coast,” said Cortese, regarding the lost land. “We are losing a lot of grazing land. Once it started, there’s no stopping it.”
Cortese recently rescued a calf that fell over the cliff. Using a pickup and a rope, he slid down to the riverbank, and roped the calf. The pickup driver slowly pulled forward and lifted the calf back onto dry land.
Many who live on and near the Little River say they understand how rivers work. Horseshoe bends carve cutbanks on one side and deposit the silt across the river on what’s called a point bar.
But they all point to a timeline that begins with the construction of dams that created Lake Belton (1954) and Stillhouse Hollow Lake (1967). Before then, riverbank vegetation withstood major floods. The pecan, cottonwood, willow, elm and ash trees shoot their roots up and down the riverbank and stabilize it from serious erosion.
Today, much of the river has been laid bare. Heavy runoff and long periods of submersion have either drowned or washed away this natural, protective layer. Giant cottonwoods, 50 feet tall, that one time grew 25 yards or more from the bank have either slid down or cling precariously to sandy cliffs. Their roots jut out from the edge and dangle in the air.
This fragile ecosystem, according to American Rivers.org, is called a riparian zone. It serves as a buffer between the riverbed below and the floodplain above.
“Plants and trees growing in the riparian zone help to stabilize the soil and reduce erosion. During a flood, the riparian zone helps absorb water. It also slows the velocity as the water spreads into the floodplain,” says the section labeled ecology 101. “Riparian vegetation helps prevent the river from down-cutting or cutting a straight path.”
Like others who have witnessed the erosion, Richard Cortese points to weeks, even months, of high river flows from floodgates upstream, and says that’s why the riverbanks are washing away.
“Basically, they changed the hydraulics, they changed how the river flows,” the junior Cortese said.
These men say they understand that their problem may not seem important to everyone. But the erosion is so widespread it threatens Milam County Road 406, only a short distance from the old iron bridge where weddings were sometimes held. An unaware motorist who parks on the side of the road and steps out their door could easily fall over the bank, down a 15-foot drop, and into the river.
A spokeswoman for Milam County Commissioner Clifford Whiteley said their office was not aware of the problem. If necessary, they would install reflectors and barricades, and possibly research moving the road. She said riverbank erosion was not their responsibility.
At a recent meeting between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Milam County officials and the unhappy landowners, Milam County Judge Frank Summers addressed this subject.
“When it’s affecting our infrastructure, it’s going to be all our problem. Even though it’s only some of us now.”
Wednesday, part two: How the Corps of Engineers decides when and how much water to release from lakes Belton and Stillhouse Hollow, and why they keep the lake levels where they do.
