Oroville reveals risk of failing dams
Safety and maintenance underfunded across the USA, so problems grow
For five years, the 10,000 residents of Newport, Ore., have known the reservoir that stores their drinking water is unsafe.
The city built two dams on the Big Creek River in 1951 and 1969, long before Oregonians knew about the high risk of a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake.
Now the city is racing to perform expensive repairs on the dams. If they fail, flooding could wipe out much of the town and leave residents without a drinking- water source.
“We’re a little worried,” said Robert Etherington, 70, who lives about 100 feet from the dam.
Oregon has one of the nation’s strongest dam oversight programs and has rated Newport’s two dams “unsatisfactory.”
On Feb. 7 at California’s Oroville Dam, officials noticed that part of the dam’s concrete spillway, which carries water from the reservoir to the nearby Feather River, had what was in effect a giant pothole. They stopped using this main spillway and as the lake continued to fill, it hit capacity Saturday, sending water down a hillside that served as Lake Oroville’s emergency spillway.
Officials evacuated more than 180,000 people, fearing erosion could cause the concrete weir holding California’s second largest reservoir at bay to give out.
Residents were allowed to return Tuesday but warned to stay alert.
Dam regulation nationwide is spotty at best, experts said. “The problem is each state and every state legislative governing body looks at it differently,” said Lori Spragens, executive director of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials in Lexington, Ky. “Some of these states are underfunded, so many dam safety programs in states are underfunded.”
While efforts in many states promote dam safety and inspections, Spragens said bureaucracy and state politics have left thousands of dams across the USA in dire conditions. At least 1,780 “high hazard potential” dams are at risk of failing, according to the association.
uTwenty- one miles south of Birmingham, Ala., Oak Mountain Middle and Elementary schools sit at the bottom of a hill where two dams hold back billions of gallons of water.
“I have four grandchildren in those schools, and every time I heard about severe weather ... it took all I could to not go take them out of school,” said Indian Springs Mayor Brenda Bell- Guercio.
Alabama is now the only state in the U. S. without a dam safety program.
uIn Ohio, Buckeye Lake’s 185- yearold dam near Columbus has nearly failed four times in the past 50 years, The ( Newark, Ohio) Advocate reported in 2015. If the dam were to fail now, flooding would affect 3,000 people. A $ 150 million restoration is underway.
uNewport, Ore., received $ 250,000 in the 2013- 15 budget for a dam stability assessment. In the current cycle, the city received an additional $ 250,000 to study the feasibility of a new dam. That project would cost an estimated $ 50 million, more than Newport could afford.