Dams in Danger

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 13:06:00 GMT

As we have blogged about in this space before, America’s infrastructure is badly in need of repair. There is one area in particular that is being overlooked—our nation’s aging dams. According to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, 4,400 of the nation’s 85,000 aging dams are considered susceptible to failure.

What could such a failure mean? In some cases, such as the Lake Isabella, California example used in this New York Times article from last week, there is at least a small chance of a deadly disaster along the lines of the Johnstown Flood that killed 2,200 in Pennsylvania in 1889. Even if a current dam failure doesn’t caused damages on the large and tragic scale of Johnstown, the impact would still be tremendous. In addition to the potential loss of human life, there would be economic and environmental damage to deal with.

The problem that is holding back dam repair, as with other types of needed infrastructure repair, is predictable: money. The bill for the necessary dam repairs will be in the tens of billions of dollars. Though Congress has appropriated money for some federal dam repair projects, about two-thirds of all dams are private, and state and local governments own most of the remainder. It is unknown how repairs to non-federal dams will be financed. Legislation to provide federal money has not made it through Congress.

Schinnerer's RM Blog - dams tag

Dams in Danger