Representatives of Haywood Waterways Association this spring hosted a presentation by a geologist conducting a landslide risk analysis of Western North Carolina in hopes that Haywood County will be one of the first in line for the analysis.

Rick Wooten, a geologist with the North Carolina Geological Survey, said he could do about two to three counties a year, so the entire project will take several years.

Ron Moser with Haywood Waterways Association is hopeful that landslide risk mapping could be used to guide development policies. If certain slopes are determined to be highly prone to slides, perhaps development guidelines and policies should take that into account, Moser said.

Wooten said one area that geologists believe has all the telltale signs of a high-risk landslide area is Maggie Valley. Wooten talked about the 2003 mini-landslide in Maggie Valley that crushed a woman in her home and killed her. When asked whether development on such slopes should be barred, Wooten was hesitant to make policy recommendations at this point.

“I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, but if these are marginally stable slopes and something does go wrong, it could have some pretty serious impacts,” Wooten said.

Lee Shelton, a Maggie Valley resident who attended the presentation, said if Maggie Valley had received the amount of rain that fell in Macon County triggering the Peeks Creek disaster last September, the consequences could have been catastrophic.

“Nine months later, we would still be seeing Maggie Valley on CNN,” Shelton said.

While many elected officials, including county commissioners and the county planning board, as well as Maggie Valley and Waynesville town board members, had been invited to the presentation, none attended.

“Well, we’d hoped a lot of elected officials would be able to take advantage of this,” said Ron Moser with Haywood Waterways Association. “It does have some really serious repercussions when you get one of these slides.”

Representatives of the Maggie Valley Sanitary District, a private entity that supplies water, did attend the presentation.

Landslides have occurred in the region throughout history, according to Wooten. In 1916, 25 inches of rain fell, triggering numerous landslides across the region. Another set of floods in 1940 triggered a tragic landslide in the Boone area, killing 26 people. With more people living on slopes and a denser population in general, the consequences could be far greater today.

“As our population continues to grow, information on landslide mapping will be critical information,” said Eric Romaniszyn, executive director of Haywood Waterways Association.