Agriculture Commissioner Jim Graham, a native of Cleveland, said the series of dams in Iredell and Alexander counties was the second project in the whole country when it was done in the 1950s.

Graham, who still has a farm near Cleveland, said he is willing to meet with the Rowan commissioners and make a case for continuing to pay for maintenance and repairs of the dams.

“It would be absolutely shortsighted not to carry on,” said Graham. “We must take care of our resources.”

Last week, Iredell County officials presented Rowan Commissioners with a bill for $127,000. They said the bill is for Rowan’s 30 percent share of the cost of upgrading and repairing several of the dams. Iredell officials reminded the Rowan board of an agreement signed in the 1970s in which Rowan committed to 30 percent of the maintenance.

Iredell officials had made two earlier appeals for Rowan support but were unsuccessful. Iredell opted to go ahead with repairing the dams in the greatest need of work.

Work began July 5 on the $500,000 plus project.

Rowan commissioners are showing little interest in paying their part of the cost. Chairman Newton Cohen asked about abandoning the dams, rather than paying for repair and maintenance.

Graham’s father, J.T. Graham, took the lead in carrying out the project to preserve farmland and eliminate a health hazard from swamp land infested with mosquitoes.

“Rowan County has a responsibility to honor our request,” Iredell County Manager Joel Mashburn told the commissioners at the meeting last week. Wade Carrigan, anIredell Soil and Water Conservation official, told the Rowan board about J.T. Graham’s role in establishing the dams.

Two Rowan commissioners, Arnold Chamberlain and Frank Tadlock, said they would like to see the dams and get a better understanding of the project. The tour of the 11 sites is tentatively scheduled next week.

News accounts published in the Salisbury Post during the ‘50s and for decades afterward cited J.T. Graham’s role in the Third Creek project.

Among the articles was a story in February 1953 where Graham conferred with President Dwight D. Eisenhower and several congressmen at the White House, discussing legislation and farm policy concerning soil and water conversation.

Two years later Graham was back in Washington to give a report on the Third Creek project to the National Watershed Conference. At that time, one dam and six miles of channel work had been completed.

J.T. Graham served as a Rowan County commissioner and in 1953 was elected president of the N.C. Soil Conservation Supervisors. He died in January 1977.

“It was one of the premier watershed projects in the whole country,” said J.T. Graham’s son, the N.C. Commissioner of Agriculture, Tuesday. “The other was in Kansas.”

With Rowan’s history of farming, Graham said he is “sort of shocked that they’ve (the commissioners) turned against farming. Some of the best farmers in North Carolina are still in Rowan County.”

He fully supports the contention of the Iredell delegation, that Rowan gets as much benefit from the project as does Iredell. He vividly recalls the floods that wiped out crops and the swamps, where malaria carrying mosquitoes swarmed by the thousands.

The malaria threat is long gone, but Graham said the flooding potential today would be much greater, given the large amounts of cement and asphalt all along the Third Creek drainage area.

“To let the dams go would be pennywise and pound foolish,” said Graham. “I realize the problem with taxes, but we must take care of our natural resources.”

He recalls the celebration of sorts when the watershed dams were complete. He and his father shot ducks on a pond off Third Creek. They cleaned them, packed them in ice, took them to the rail station at Barber and shipped them to the White House.

Graham, state agriculture commissioners since 1964, said he has had a few telephone calls from Rowan farmers concerned by the commissioners’ apparent reluctance to support maintaining the dams.

Rowan commissioners, including Cohen, Tadlock and Dave Rowland, expressed reluctance to appropriate general tax revenues for the project. They contended the dams specifically benefits farmers.

Tadlock pushed for finding state or federal grants.

Commissioner Steve Blount and Chamberlain asked for more information about the benefits to the county.