DAMS DAMAGED BY ‘CAVITATION’

1967: Heavy snow melt in the Bighorn River basin raises the Yellowtail Dam reservoir to record levels, opening the spillway for 20 straight days. The Montana dam spillways suffers a hole the size of a semi-truck and trailer.

1977: The Karun Damin Iran has more than 7,500 feet of concrete torn up on its concrete spillways.

1979: The Kebon Dam along the Euphrates River in Turkey suffers damage to two spillways, one had been running for 15 days, another just three.

1983: The Glen Canyon Dam takes on heavy snowmelt and rains leading to water coming perilously close to the top of the dam. Its two tunnel spillways open for the first time ever and both receive significant damage. Engineers create new aerator devices to fix the problem, a big turning point in spillway engineering.

1983: Hoover Dam, the nation’s most well-known, used its spillways in 1941 for initial testing and again in 1983 due to unanticipated high water levels, and both times a concrete elbow transition suffered cavitation damage.

Mid-1980s: Flaming Gorge Damon the Green River in northeastern Utah and Blue Mesa Damin Colorado suffered damage. Both were fixed with aeration devices.