The original inhabitants of North Carolina's lower Roanoke region called the river Moratoc, "River of Death," because it was prone to flash flooding. In the wake of record-breaking high water in 1940, Congress authorized the construction of a stringof dams to control flooding and produce electric power. About eight years ago, Sam Pearsall, director of science in The Nature Conservancy's North Carolina chapter, figured that these dams were a part of an ongoing problem in the low-lying forests downstream where tree seedlings were not surviving. The dams were releasing too much water at a time when floods would naturally be very short and very rare -- a time that also happened to be the critical growing season for seedlings.
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