An investigation by The Associated Press in 2022 found the number of high-hazard dams was on the rise: More than 2,200 nationwide, up substantially from a similar AP review conducted three years earlier. The number is likely even higher, although it’s unclear because some states don’t track the data and many federal agencies refuse to release details about dam conditions.
It’s your money, what are they doing with it?? Take a look around at our nation. It is a disgrace. All that hard earned money that our parents and grandparents paid into the Nation’s till to cover the cost of upkeep for our infrastructure and where has it gone? Our roads are fracturing, crumbling and falling away. I am certain that you are already aware of this issue as you drive them every day. Besides the cost of tires, wheel alignments and medical bills from accidents, these roads are at high risk for catastrophic events. You can visit this link for details on their current condition by state: The State of America’s Roads Then there are the bridges: “The U.S. has 614,387 bridges, almost four in 10 of which are 50 years or older. 56,007 — 9.1% — of the nation’s bridges were structurally deficient in 2016, and on average there were 188 million trips across a structurally deficient bridge each day. While the number of bridges that are in such poor condition as to be considered structurally deficient is decreasing, the average age of America’s bridges keeps going up and many of the nation’s bridges are approaching the end of their design life. The most recent estimate puts the nation’s backlog of bridge rehabilitation needs at $123 billion.” Source
Of course, there is the matter of plumbing lines, sewer lines, gas lines, and power grids. But today I want to focus on what is currently a GENUINE URGENT ISSUE and that is our DAMS. PLEASE, this information COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE. You need to research your neighborhood and find out where the dams are located in your surrounding area. WATCH the weather reports very closely. You could be in imminent danger from flooding in the next few months. Keep supplies on hand and have an escape plan. BE AWARE and STAY ALIVE!
This is an issue that came to my attention several years back. I am thankful to have an opportunity to bring it to light for many others. It is an imminent danger to all of us. The very sad thing is that the people who make the money decisions in this country have been fully aware of this problem for a long time. I believe that they decided long ago that rather than repair all these things they would just orchestrate a scenario whereby all of it will be wiped out, providing them with an opportunity to start fresh. Rebuild from the ashes so to speak. The Phoenix Rising.
The thing that irks me is that so-called “scientists” know darn well that there are very serious risks to the public related to most of the things with which they like to “experiment” BUT THEY DON’T CARE. Scientists have no morals. They are only interested in discovery. They don’t care about the consequences to humanity. They are DRIVEN to push forward, especially because to receive the funding they MUST.
The evidence has been clear that DAMS change the environment, affect the weather and put wildlife and people at HIGH RISK. These dams that have been in existence for over 50 years have had a real impact on our world. They have had plenty of time to affect our weather patterns and temperatures. Climate Change IS caused by HUMANS, but not the way they want you to believe. Now with Artificial Sun, Chemtrails, HAARP and Direct Energy Weapons (DEWs), they have the added power of being able to manipulate and direct the storm systems produced by the dams. They are using this power to cause havoc, to reduce population and bring the infrastructure down in their timing. The elites want to be GODS, they have already declared that they will be GODs. What better way to demonstrate that then to control the weather and thus control our lives? Video “We will become Gods” Richard Sneed
We have paid BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF DOLLARS not only through taxes but through various types of donations and support groups. Where has that money gone? They have used it to build war machines, space vehicles, drug culture, man-made epidemics, GMO’s, and to line the pockets of corrupt public officials and business executives. We the people have been asleep. No one has been paying attention, even though there have been brave info warriors fighting hard to get bring us the TRUTH.
Dams are a monumental presence on the American landscape. They divert and restrain mighty rivers that have run for millennia. They impound vast artificial lakes. Water from dams has turned deserts into orchards, slaked the thirst of millions of metropolitan citizens, and powered wartime production from the Southeast to the Northwest; but dams have also prevented salmon from spawning, flooded forests and fields, displaced populations, and required graves to be exhumed. It is not surprising, then, that dam building inspires powerful emotions.
Most people, when asked about American dams, think of one of the massive federal projects built between the 1930s and the 1970s, such as Hoover Dam or the Grand Coulee. Yet according to the National Research Council, there are over 2.5 million dams in the United States, most of which are small, privately owned structures. 1 Only a very small number — six thousand, to be precise — are large dams over 50 feet high, and only a small portion of these have been built by the federal government. 2 It is a bit daunting, then, to present a picture of dams across America. Which dams should one talk about? The most typical or the most exceptional ones? The structurally innovative, politically contentious, or newsworthy ones? The exemplary, influential, or precedent-setting ones?
Histories of engineering talk about dams in superlatives. They are the longest, highest, or most massive; they have the biggest reservoir or the highest head drop (distance from the reservoir surface to the powerhouse), or they were made with the least or the most amount of material. They were the first or the latest to set records in any of these ways. Dams imply a kind of engineering Olympics, a measure of people against nature. Like that other great technological achievement, the skyscraper, one can always build a bigger dam. Certainly, the biggest dams in the United States were colossal undertakings that took years to complete. The architectural critic Lewis Mumford called them “democratic pyramids” and compared them to the greatest constructions of antiquity. 3 The cultural historian David Nye suggests that because dams inspire feelings of awe, they engender national pride. 4 If newspaper coverage is any measure, this would certainly seem to be the case with the dams that span the great rivers of the country, like Hoover Dam across the Colorado, the Grand Coulee Dam across the Columbia, and Fort Peck Dam across the Missouri.
In social terms, dams have always held the promise of using technology to harness nature for the benefit of people. This dream is perhaps best exemplified by the dams of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Yet today, dams are a much-maligned, even vilified, presence in the country’s western landscapes. They are criticized as destroyers of animal habitats, usurpers of native lands, boondoggles for land speculators, or subsidies for wealthy farmers. Yet ranchers, farmers, industrialists, unions, municipalities, states, and federal agencies have all, over the years, vied energetically for federal support in dam building, because dams require a huge mobilization of capital, manpower, and resources. And they have similarly huge effects, both desirable and collateral.
By 2015, the dam industry had choked more than half of the Earth’s major rivers with some 57,000 large dams. The consequences of this massive engineering program have been devastating. The world’s large dams have wiped out species; flooded huge areas of wetlands, forests and farmlands; and displaced tens of millions of people.
Scientists have long suspected that the world’s dams can create their own weather, often bringing more rain. Water in reservoirs behind dams, plus the water used to irrigate nearby land puts more moisture in the air, which falls as precipitation.
Now some researchers are sounding the alarm that dams—along with their reservoirs—might also trigger more frequent fierce storms that could be the dams’ undoing. That’s worrisome, especially in the United States, where dams are rapidly aging, according to some researchers.
Faisal Hossain, an engineer at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, has led several recent studies on 633 dams and about 100 rainfall nearby stations.
“The focus is not so much on average rainfall per se, but rather on the question of whether 25-year storm data that an engineer used to size a reservoir has now become a 15-year storm … as the dams aged,” he said. “It is the heavy rainfall that has tremendous implications on dam safety.”
Roger Pielke, Sr., a senior researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder, pointed out that reservoirs behind large dams combine with land use changes accompanying dams—like more irrigated farmland—to induce rainfall changes.
Pielke and Hossain have contributed to a review article on the subject in the Dec. 1, 2009 issue of EOS, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
The idea that dams can change weather patterns is not new. Studies observing such changes go back decades.
Hossain and his team said their findings bear on an aging waterworks infrastructure particularly in the United States, where 85 percent of dams will be at least 50 years of age by the year 2020.
JOE RAEDLE VIA GETTY IMAGES Floods struck South Carolina in 2015, caused in part by dam breaches.
America’s infrastructure is crumbling.
The dams are in particularly rough shape and many have deteriorated — some to dangerous and potentially deadly degrees. Engineers estimate 70 percent of the country’s 87,000 dams will be more than 50 years old by 2020.
If new legislation passes in Congress this month, it would funnel $4.6 billion into water resource projects, including flood management projects carried out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
But engineers warn it’s not enough.
Regulatory challenges aside, repairing the aging dams could cost $54 billion, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. So far, the hefty price tag has slowed efforts to fix failing dams, since state agencies and private owners can’t always afford the cash needed to make improvements, Ogden said.
Many aging dams can no longer manage the waters they were built to control because of changes in river flows and weather patterns. Others weren’t designed to protect the dense clusters of homes and businesses that have sprung up around them.
“We have quite a number of dams built across the country originally in rural locations where there was no hazard,” France told The Huffington Post. “But since then, development has happened and people have built houses and roads, and dams that used to be low-hazard dams are now high-hazard dams.” Dams classified as “high-hazard” pose a threat to human life.
Failing to repair and modernize the country’s aging dams leaves Americans and their property at risk, France said.
High-hazard dams, especially those that are poorly maintained, pose a threat to life and property across the country. But no one actually knows the full risk that old and dilapidated dams create, according to Mark Ogden, a project manager at the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.
Federal agencies do not own or control most of the country’s dams, which means the U.S. government can’t require dam owners to update their facilities. The country’s 49 state dam safety agencies regulate privately owned dams, though Alabama doesn’t have a dam safety agency. The agencies have varying degrees of enforcement power, making it tough to roll out fixes to dams nationwide.
Regulatory challenges aside, repairing the aging dams could cost $54 billion, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. So far, the hefty price tag has slowed efforts to fix failing dams, since state agencies and private owners can’t always afford the cash needed to make improvements, Ogden said.
Many Americans don’t realize just how sorely U.S. dams need the investment, according to Ogden. “It doesn’t get the attention that a lot of other infrastructure does,” he said. “People turn on their taps everyday but don’t realize that water is coming from a reservoir made by a dam.”
“Engineers and hydrologists and meteorologists are making sure we’re up to date with new projections of where flooding might be as a result of the changing climate,” he said.
Our nation’s infrastructure is in widespread disrepair, but to see where the collapse is particularly threatening to our society and our economy, look no further than our 84,000-plus dams. Consider the following facts:
More than 28,000 dams—about one-third of all dams in the United States—are already more than 50 years old, the standard intended lifespan of most dams.
By 2030 more than 70 percent of dams are expected to be at least 50 years old.
About 14,000 dams across the country are classified as “high-hazard” dams, meaning a dam failure or operational error could result in the loss of human life.
In 2008 more than 2,000 of these high-hazard dams were also rated structurally “deficient,” meaning they were at serious risk of failure.
Communities in every state are at risk due to the presence of high-hazard dams in need of repair. Below we list the 10 states with the most state-regulated, high-hazard dams in need of repair in 2010.
Even more troubling, six states reported all of their state-regulated, high-hazard dams as “not rated” for structural soundness in 2010. These states are Texas, South Carolina, Hawaii, Florida, South Dakota, and Alaska. Not having a state dam-safety program, Alabama also did not report condition information on their high-hazard dams in 2010. In 2008, 300 of Texas’s high-hazard dams were reported as being in need of repair, as were 59 of Hawaii’s.
For 50 years, America’s small upstream dams have provided for flood protection, municipal water supplies, wildlife habitat, water for livestock, and recreational opportunities. But time has taken its toll. Many of the nation’s dams, including those in Iowa, are in desperate need of repair. If problems are not corrected, the consequences are grave—to both people and the environment. Funding is needed, and now is the time to act.
IN IOWA ALONE:
More than 600 dams need to be rebuilt and upgraded to ensure the safety and health of those downstream. In addition, another 1,500 dams need repairs so they can continue to provide flood control, municipal water supplies, recreational activities, water for livestock, and wildlife habitat. An estimated $540 million is needed to rehabilitate these dams.
Ten thousand dams built under Small Watershed Programs make up a $9 billion infrastructure. These dams provide more than $800 million in benefits annually. The majority of these dams were built for a 50-year lifespan and some have already or soon will reach that mark. Funds for building these dams have come from four programs: Flood Control Act of 1944 (PL-78-534); Pilot Watershed Program;.Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act of 1953 (PL 83-566); and Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D).
Iowa is home to some of the nation’s oldest dams. In 1998, six dams and similar structures reached their 50-year design life; 44 more will reach that milestone in 1999. These dams and structures are filled or filling with sediment, and their pipe spillways are cracked and leaking. These are just some
of the problems facing project sponsors and landowners. Consider:
IN IOWA ALONE:
•If not repaired, 268 dams and structures will have major adverse environmental, economic, and social impacts.
•16 dams built to protect agricultural lands now have homes or other buildings downstream, increasing the hazard to life.
•It will take $20 million to rehabilitate these 284 dams and structures.
•There are 1,190 flood-control dams and 1,181 grade-stabilization structures in 63 watershed areas. These 2,371 dams and structures represent a $153 million infrastructure and protect more than 1 million acres.
DAMS IN DANGER – P E O P L E A T R I S K ?
A Case Study…
The Little Beaver Subwatershed, a part of the early Little Sioux Flood Prevention Project, is in desperate need of rehabilitation. The problems include:
•4,000 tons of sediment have filled the upper detention structure. The structure is so full of sediment that large rains caused a paved county road to be flooded—and capacity to protect against flooding is lost.
•Other dams have leaking and cracking concrete spillways. The county, sponsors, and landowners are concerned.
The Little Beaver Subwatershed covers 2,980 acres in the fragile, erosion-prone Loess Hills of western Iowa. Dozens of nearby projects have similar problems.
The local sponsors and landowners, assisted by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), built six small upstream flood control dams and six full-flow grade-stabilization structures as part of the project more than 35 years ago. Two of these dams eliminated dangerous bridges. This work was done under the Flood Control Act of 1944 (Public Law 78-534). The Woodbury County Soil and Water Conservation District, the local sponsor of the project, assumed maintenance responsibilities for the dams after construction. The district has diligently maintained the dams over the years, but does not have the funds to correct serious problems.
The Little Beaver Subwatershed has been selected as a local pilot rehabilitation project. Surveys are underway to determine what is needed and what different alternatives may be available.
THE PROBLEMS. Dams filling with sediment (top) and deteriorating concrete spillways (above and left) are major, costly problems in the Little Beaver Subwatershed. Dozens of other dams face the same problems.
2008, the Texas State Auditor’s office released the kind of report that keeps public officials awake at night. It found that state regulators were not ensuring the proper maintenance of thousands of dams in Texas. The audit found that state inspectors had never visited hundreds of dams that could cause loss of life if they failed.
A significant hazard dam is a one that could possibly kill people and most certainly cause economic loss if it were to fail. If a high hazard dam fails, it will probably kill people and cause major property damage. About 60 percent of dams in Texas are on private land, making the job of inspecting them more difficult. But, Samuelson says, now that all high and significant hazard structures have been inspected, they will not fall from view of his program.
Under House Bill 677, nearly 3,000 dams in the state were exempted from inspection. Two hundred and sixteen of those were significant hazard dams, according to a dam safety presentation given by the TCEQ. That means that about 30 percent of the state’s inventory of significant hazard dams, the same dams the auditor’s office urged officials to monitor, will now forgo inspection by the state.
The bill was a re-iteration of legislation passed in 2011. That bill granted exemptions, but not permanently. The new law, which applies to private dams in rural parts of the state, has no sunset provision. It was presented as a way to lessen the burden of regulation on private dam owners.
The passage of the bill was a victory for some rural dam owners. But, perhaps not for public safety.
Correction: An earlier version of this story said that dam owners still need to follow requirements for maintaining their dams under HB 677. In fact, the law frees dam owners from meeting TCEQ requirements. The TCEQ says they are simply still “responsible” for the maintenance and upkeep of their dams.
The Mississippi River is a main artery of the United States!
The Mississippi River is important due to its necessity in American commerce. Cities such as New Orleans, St. Louis, and Minneapolis all get water from the river.
The Mississippi River provides hydroelectric power to a number of different cities. The river is the second longest in the United States and has 25 locks and dams. The river also drains off floodwater, which prevents many regions throughout the United States from flooding. In fact, there are 31 states and 2 Canadian provinces that drain water into the Mississippi. This includes thousands of rivers and streams, which make up its system of drainage. Transportation barges throughout the Midwest can ship to and from ports accessible through the Gulf of Mexico, making it important to trade and transportation. Transport along the river is the cheapest form of transportation going back and forth from the Southeast United States.
DAVENPORT, Iowa (KCRG-TV9) – The Mississippi River locks and dams are part of an aging infrastructure and starting to crumble. But there isn’t enough funding for all the projects they need to do.
Chief of Operations with the Army Corps of Engineers Michael Cox says, “We have been investing in the high priority, critical maintenance needs more than we have in the past.”
At Lock and Dam 15, the Army Corps of Engineers do maintenance by emptying out the pool of the lock.
However, the equipment they were using was so old, it was condemned.
Now a contractor is installing bulkheads so they can start up maintenance again, “There’s one on each side of the chamber, it allows us to set bulkheads so that we can put up a dam using those recesses in the bulkheads and then pump the water out.
Cox points to one side already with bulkheads, “[The contractor] completed this, and that’s what he’s doing on the other side here, in addition to that, he’s also installing new mitigate anchorages.”
Those are the hinges to the gates of the lock and built into the concrete.
Cox says, “That’s original equipment, the steel degrades, the concrete degrades and it becomes a much higher risk of reliability.”
To fix it, the contractor has to seal off the area and cut the stone. Construction Representative with the Army Corps of Engineers Pete Corken says, “Then the next step is, of course, the removal, the placement of rebar tie backs to support the new structures. Then you set in the structures themselves.”
Construction Representative Pete Corken says one of the hardest things about the job is discovering problems in the heart of the concrete.
“You never know what you’re going to get into when you start opening up 80 year old concrete.” He says before pointing out a hole where workers are cutting into the lock, “See that fracture right there, the crack in the concrete? That gives you an idea of what’s going on inside.”
Bulkhead repairs can take 90 to 120 days. Fortunately, Lock and Dam 15 has two locks. So it’s still in operation.
Corken says, “A lot of this stuff was built or designed with only a 50 year lifespan.”
This lock and dam is almost 80 years old now.
Going further down the lock, on the side already repaired, Cox points out a wall, “Those barges are faced up along what we call the long wall or the guide wall. That’s where we have some movement, and we actually have a hole in that wall in the lower end.”
For three years that wall had been slowly degrading. One day, cracks were found, the next day, those cracks had doubled in size. A crew was mobilized and started to demo. Cox says that would have been disastrous, “If the worst part fell in, it would drag in other portions of it.”
With the other side under repair, that could have stopped all traffic through the lock and dam.
Cox says, “It was a very good interim risk reduction measure until we get permanent repairs done. The very lower part of the wall we left in place to give pilots a very good view of where the end of the wall is and where the hole is.”
They sent a notice to tow operators, who now have to angle out of the lock to keep a safe distance.
Cox says fixing the hole will take money, “So we’re talking about removing 12 monoliths worth of wall and rebuilding it back up safely. It will cost about $15 million.”
Right now, there’s no money in the budget for that repair.
Cox says budgeting repairs for locks and dams are a small price to pay when you look at how much they save, ”It provides a transportation savings of $1 billion just for the upper Mississippi river system alone. Across the whole nation, it’s more like $7 billion of transportation savings for the nation.”
But he is proud of what they have done, “Our contractors that you’ve seen here today and our maintenance crews that respond to emergencies like this and do preventative maintenance. They do an outstanding job of keeping the system functioning relatively reliably with the limited resources that we have.”
To combat a lack of funds, they started a national asset management program to identify infrastructure needs and how much that costs, which has helped, in six years, they’ve gotten an additional 150 million dollars specifically for infrastructure maintenance. That’s more than a year’s worth of operation and maintenance budget for their district.
Cox says that’s not as much as it seems, “$150 million may sound like a lot, but the Mississippi Valley Division, which is six districts from St. Paul down to New Orleans, we have over $1 billion in known deferred maintenance. A backlog of maintenance. Our critical maintenance needs that we don’t have funding for.”
Nuclear reactors are built next to rivers, lakes, and oceans because they require vast quantities of cooling water. Many U.S. nuclear plants along a river have one or more dams located upstream. If a dam fails, the ensuing flood waters could overwhelm the plant’s protective barriers and disable important safety equipment, causing an accident that could lease a large amount of radiation, just as it did in the accident at Fukushima, Japan in March 2011. In that case the flooding was caused by a tsunami rather than a broken dam, but the result could be similar. The risk of such a nuclear accident appears to be greater than previously thought. A July 2011 report by Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff states that its analysis “suggests that external flooding due to upstream dam failure poses a larger than expected risk to plants and public safety” and that the probability and consequence of those events require NRC attention. In particular, that report states that 34 reactors—one-third of the U.S. nuclear fleet—may face flooding hazards greater than they are designed to withstand, as a result of the failure of upstream dams (see list below). The NRC has known about some of these problems for 15 years and has not effectively addressed them.
How Likely is a Dam Failure? A 2009 NRC letter states that “a Jocassee Dam failure is a credible event” and that “NRC staff expressed concerns that Duke has not demonstrated that the Oconee Nuclear Station units will be adequately protected.”2 The July 2011 NRC report notes that “dam failure incidents are common,” and that over 700 have occurred in the United States since 1975. Of these, 148 failures were of large dams, with heights of 40 feet or more.
The 34 reactors of concern are downstream from a total of more than 50 dams, more than half of which are roughly the size of the Jocassee dam. Assuming the NRC’s failure rate applies to all of those dams, the probability that one will fail in the next 40 years is roughly 25 percent—a 1 in 4 chance. Even if this assumption is not correct, this estimate shows that the cumulative probability of a dam failure may be great enough that the NRC should prioritize understanding and addressing the risk. Moreover, these dam failure rates do not include the risks
posed by earthquakes or terrorism. As a result, the actual Oconee Nuclear Station and Jocassee Dam [A fully referenced version of] this fact sheet is available online at www ucsusa/full link org probability could be higher than that given above.
The NRC report notes that NRC safety regulations related to dam failures focus heavily on failures from earthquakes, but that historically earthquakes account for less than 10 to 20 percent of dam failures. The report therefore questions “whether the regulatory guidance forming the licensing basis of most existing nuclear power plants comprehensively addressed the statistically most common dam failure modes.” The NRC must reconsider this issue.
The NRC’s Responsibility?
To resolve this safety issue, the NRC must require plants to address known flooding hazards, and thoroughly investigate other plants that may be at risk and require them to resolve any hazards that are discovered. The Oconee and Fort Calhoun vulnerabilities were not apparent until after detailed investigations at the plants. The information needed for such investigations goes beyond what the NRC typically has for plants. Such an investigation should be tasked to acquire and use the necessary additional information.
However, the NRC’s record on this issue is notencouraging. It knew about flooding hazards at Oconee since at least 1996 but did not take steps to address the situation for many years. (Duke Energy has reportedly begun to modify the Oconee plant to address consequences of a potential failure of Jocassee Dam, but completion of those modifications has reportedly slipped from 2013 to 2017.)
Moreover, the NRC’s reaction to its staff’s July 2011 study that warned of potential flooding risks was to black out sections of the report before releasing it publicly. The lead author of that report wrote to the NRC’s Inspector General arguing that the information the NRC blacked out was related to reactor safety rather than security concerns—a charge supported by the fact that the Department of Homeland Security did not require any deletions before making the report public. He stated in his letter:
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff may be motivated to prevent the disclosure of this safety information to the public because it will embarrass the agency. The redacted information includes discussion of, and excerpts from, NRC official agency records that show the NRC has been in possession of relevant, notable, and derogatory safety information for an extended period but failed to properly act on it.
Concurrently, the NRC concealed the information from the public.”
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which owns the Fukushima plant, and Japan’s nuclear power regulatory agency have been heavily criticized following the accident for not aggressively reevaluating safety precautions after obtaining evidence prior to the accident of tsunami threats greater than the plant was designed to withstand..
The NRC knows—and has known—about a similar hazard facing U.S. nuclear plants: flooding from upstream dam failures that can disable the emergency equipment needed to prevent reactor core meltdown. The NRC must aggressively address this issue to determine whether or not dam failures pose credible threats. If so, the NRC must compel plants to take the necessary protective measures to manage the risks. If not, the NRC should document its conclusions and have them peer-reviewed by the agency’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.
Record-setting storms and flooding continue to force the closure of roads and bridges on the National Highway System by the dozens in states throughout the Midwest, according to the Federal Highway Administration – especially in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska.
[Above photo by U.S. Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Rebecca Imwalle.]
The FHWA said in a statement on May 31 that it continues to coordinate with state department of transportation officials in affected areas and stands ready to assist impacted states with emergency relief needs, including funding, detour routes and any technical assistance for bridge and/or roadway repairs after water recedes.
Photo by Missouri Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Christy Van Drunen
Damages to roads and bridges caused by recent storms and flooding over the first half of 2019 are among the costliest in recent memory, the agency added, noting that since January, FHWA has directed $54.9 million in “quick release” emergency relief or ER funds to help states repair roads and bridges nationwide – roughly three times higher than the $19.8 million awarded during the same period in 2018.
The South Dakota Department of Transportation is the most recent recipient of such ER funding, getting $1.5 million from FHWA to cope with what’s expected to be $9 million in overall damage to road surfaces, culverts, and bridge decks.
The agency noted in a statement that a severe winter storm in mid-March dropped wet heavy snow across a majority of South Dakota in a short timeframe that resulted in extensive flooding after temperatures subsequently increased – washing out roads, bridge approaches, and leaving many bridges partly submerged.
Photo by the Nebraska National Guard
The flooding is so bad that the Federal Railroad Administration said it constitutes an “emergency event” as related to railroad operations. In making this determination, the FRA noted in a statement that “historic flooding” throughout the region is causing power outages along with breached dams and levees.
In a June 4 visit to Tulsa, OK, Vice President Pence noted during a press event that there had been 800 incidents of flooding and severe storms and tornadoes in the state of Oklahoma alone since May 1st.
Official White House photo by D. Myles Cullen
“We’re all with you at the federal and the state level, and we’re going to help you rebuild your homes and your communities bigger and better than ever before,” the vice president (seen at right) said. “Violent weather like we’ve seen pass through Oklahoma and throughout the Heartland has an enormous cost on families, on residences, on businesses, on farmers, and ranchers.”
The White House also approved Oklahoma’s request for disaster assistance on June 2 for three of its most flood-ravaged counties as well.
Tim Gatz – executive director of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and Oklahoma’s secretary of transportation as well – noted in news reports that his agency has spent $2 million on emergency response efforts so far, but expects that amount to increase as the floodwaters recede and the full extent of damage to Oklahoma’s roads and bridges is revealed.
Tim Gatz (at far left). Photo by the Oklahoma DOT
“I’ve seen flood events like this that will go into the five or tens of millions of dollars,” Gatz explained in an interview with The Oklahoman, adding that the Oklahoma DOT “already knows” it will have to repair some highway shoulders that have crumbled due to water damage. “We’re going to be putting eyes on everything, all of our infrastructure and assets out there that have been impacted by flooding,” he said.
The agency added that there have been 150 highway closures since mid-April in Oklahoma, and as of June 4, some 15 damaged highways remained closed.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) noted in a June 3 statement that the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency has deployed “flood-fighting resources” in 33 counties within his state, that 28 levee breaches have been reported, and that the Missouri Department of Transportation reports that some 382 roads are closed in 56 counties due to the ongoing flooding. He also activated the Missouri National Guard on May 27 to aid in flood mitigation efforts.
Photo by Missouri Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Christy Van Drunen
“This is all about people helping people, communities helping communities, and continuing to assist each other during these tough times. Working together, we’re going to battle this flood for the long haul,” Gov. Parson said. “The flooding is devastating, and we’re not out of it yet. Today was about witnessing firsthand how Missourians are rallying together to support each other and sharing with local cities that we are here to help.”
On June 4, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) activated an additional 200 Illinois National Guard soldiers to help fight flooding fight along the Illinois and Mississippi rivers after floodwaters surged over the Nutwood Levee, which forced the closure of Illinois State Route 16. In all, more than 400 guardsmen are reinforcing Illinois’ efforts to fight what the governor called “raging floodwaters” in a statement.
“The State of Illinois will use every resource at its disposal to protect our residents and our communities from devastating floods,” he said, noting that state agencies so far have provided more than three million sandbags, more than 2,700 rolls of plastic, and 27 pumps to assist local communities as they fight rising floodwaters and protect their critical infrastructure.
(CNN) There are more than 54,000 bridges in the United States that need to be repaired or replaced. That’s good news — relatively speaking — because a year ago, the number was more than 55,000.
The latest figure comes from a report by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, a group that advocates for strong investment in transportation infrastructure.
This year’s report, looking at data from 2017, found:
There are 612,677 bridges in the United States.
Of them, 54,259 are “structurally deficient,” which means they have at least one key structural element in poor condition.
That’s almost 9% of all US bridges, and the figure includes famous ones like the Arlington Memorial Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge.
Americans cross these structurally deficient bridges 174 million times each day.
The report found that the largest number of defective bridges are in:
Iowa
Pennsylvania
Oklahoma
Missouri
States with the smallest number of structurally deficient bridges are:
Hawaii
Delaware
Nevada
What it means to be structurally deficient
Bridges are regularly rated for safety on a scale of 0 to 9, with 9 meaning “excellent.” In order to be considered structurally deficient, one of its major components must measure 4 or below.
Being structurally deficient does not necessarily mean that the bridge is unsafe, but it does mean it’s in need of repair.
Repairing the deficiencies is critical. Deteriorating bridges can lead to road closures, which means there’s limited access for cargo trucks.
Traffic bottlenecks cost the trucking industry alone $60 billion a year in lost productivity and fuel, said Alison Black, chief economist with American Road and Transportation Builders Association, which “increases the cost of everything we make, buy or export.”
The journey to repairing
Although the number of structurally deficient bridges decreased this year, it’s only down two-tenths of a percent from the previous year.
That’s not a huge improvement.
Because there are so many bridges in the United States, repairing or replacing all of them would take 37 years at the current pace.
“There is improvement,” said Black, “but a lot of work to be done.”
Almost 1 out of every 10 bridges is in dire need of repair, according to the American Road & Transporation Builders Association. Watch more at MSNBC: https://on.msnbc.com/2KV0S4D
Cracked pavement, crumbling shoulders and potholes plague El Dorado County’s roadways. More funding for road maintenance is needed, according to officials. Democrat photo by Shelly Thorene
Anticipating a flow of new money for road repair and past-due maintenance over the next five years, El Dorado County’s Board of Supervisors signed and sent a letter to State Sen. Jim Beall in support of his Senate Bill 16. The bill is intended to particularly address a chronic and severe “backlog” of maintenance needs both for the state’s highways and for local streets and roads. A third reading of the proposed bill is due any day now, according to the state website showing its full context.
In a 50-50 split, the new revenues will be shared by the state and local jurisdictions for projects meeting the “backlog” category. Basically, the bill amends and adds language to the relevant Government Code sections allowing increases in the state taxes on motor vehicle fuel and diesel fuel. The revenues will be sent into accounts set up by a newly created “Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Program to address deferred maintenance on the state highway system and the local street and road system,” the bill states.
El Dorado County’s Department of Transportation operates a capital improvement program to manage 1,079 miles of county-maintained roadways, DOT Deputy Director Don Spear told the Mountain Democrat Tuesday. The program includes maintenance such as brush clearing, re-striping, sign location, surfacing and paving as well as major repair and replacement projects of roads and bridges. Spear also pointed out that dirt roads, gravel and asphalt roads and paved roads comprise that 1,079 miles.
Determining the number of roadways that might fit into the “backlog” category, he said, “it’s really subjective, but there are tons of projects currently in deferred maintenance status.”
DOT Director Bard Lower added details to the estimates. Lower said that the quality of the pavement on all county roads combined rates a score of 63 out of 100. The latter is considered the peak of effective paving relative to each road’s capacity to handle its traffic loads. He said his specialists have figured that the county’s “backlog” currently represents a necessary expenditure of approximately $21 million. That amount would bring the overall score up to 70 which, he noted, is considered adequate or somewhat better than adequate.
SB 16 would authorize an increase of $0.10 per gallon for motor vehicle fuel, all of which will be put into the RMRP account. The diesel increase is $0.12 per gallon of which $0.10 will go to the maintenance fund. Effective July 1 of this year the state reduced its excise tax on fuels from $0.36 per gallon to $0.30 per gallon. Including federal gas tax of $0.18 and other fees and taxes, the total collected in California is just short of 66 cents per gallon of fuel.
SB 16 contains a 10-point laundry list justifying the need for the RMRP. The first two items describe the coming fiscal nightmare likely if something like SB 16 is not enacted. In order to keep the state highway system “in a basic state of good repair,” the bill describes a shortfall of $59 billion over the next 10 years. Even worse, the prediction for cities and counties over the same period is $78 billion.
By way of introducing the heart of the bill, the language reflects the view that a state of urgency exists and that the “Act … is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety within the meaning of Article IV of the Constitution;” and “in order to provide additional funding for road maintenance and rehabilitation purposes as quickly as possible, it is necessary for this act to take effect immediately.”
Noting that taxes and fees for maintenance of the highway and road systems have not been increased in more than 20 years, the bill states that while maintenance costs have increased over two decades, the revenues collected have lost 55 percent of their purchasing power; and “much of the underlying infrastructure has aged past its expected useful life.”
California motorists spend over $700 annually per driver for vehicle repairs directly attributed to the poor condition of the state’s roads. That totals $17 billion per year in car repairs, the bill states. Deferring or delaying action will compound the problem and require even “more drastic measures” in the future. The proposed five-year funding program, in effect, is aimed at addressing and stabilizing the maintenance backlog until a longer-term solution can be implemented. Spreading modest fee and tax increases among “all users and beneficiaries” of the state’s roads thereby prevents “overburdening any one group.”
Citing federal government estimates, the bill suggests that economic benefits will accrue to all of California’s residents by lowering the cost of doing business, reducing traffic congestion, protecting property values and improving safety for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike. According to the estimates, the effort could result in the creation of more than 13,000 jobs per $1 billion spent maintaining the system. “Well-maintained roads additionally provide significant health benefits and prevent injuries and death due to crashes caused by poorly maintained infrastructure,” the list of justifications concludes.
The board’s letter signed by Chairman Brian Veerkamp emphasizes the need for swift action in setting up the maintenance and rehabilitation program. Without a serious commitment to fund such a program, “(the state) could be facing an infrastructure catastrophe,” the letter reads in part. El Dorado County is ready and willing to use any and all available program funds throughout the next five years, Veerkamp advised. Additional funding could forestall more expensive repair projects in the future and would help pay for local road projects that currently need substantial repair work.
U.S water infrastructure is rapidly aging and causing disease outbreaks, water loss, and property damage; these problems primarily owe to ancient water pipes, many of which have not been repaired or upgraded since they were first installed in the years following the Second World War; some are over eighty years old; on average 700 water mains break a day flooding homes and causing thousands of dollars in property damage; a 2008 salmonella outbreak in Colorado that sickened 250 people was linked to poor water infrastructure; an estimated seven billion gallons of water is lost due to leaky pipes
Critical infrastructure that provides millions of homes with water in the United States is rapidly aging and causing disease outbreaks, water loss, and property damage.
According to CNN, on average 700 water mains break a day flooding homes and causing thousands of dollars in property damage.
In its 2009 Report Card of America’s Infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) graded U.S. water infrastructure at a “D minus.”
The report estimated that seven billion gallons of water is lost due to leaking pipes.
Furthermore, poor infrastructure is believed to the cause of large disease outbreaks.
According to Eric Goldstein of the Natural Resources Defense Council, contaminated drinking water as a result of poor water infrastructure caused a 2008 salmonella outbreak that affected more than 250 people in Colorado.
“Anytime you’re breaking the seal of the system that brings water into your homes and apartments, you’re risking contamination from bacteria and viruses,” Goldstein said.
Problems with water pipes primarily owe to age. Much of the U.S.water delivery system was first installed in the years immediately following the Second World War with little upgrades since.
Thirty percent of the larger water pipes, those that transport water to more than 100,00 people, are anywhere from forty to eighty years old, and roughly 10 percent of these pipes are even older.
The main impediment to making critical maintenance or upgrades is cost. Each year the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) estimates for the cost to repair the U.S. water infrastructure system rises. In 1999 the EPA estimated that the total cost was roughly $198 billion – the latest estimate was $335 billion.
The primary cost driver has been the increasing complexity to repair these pipes.
George Hawkins, the District of Columbia a water general manager, said that, “So much has been added to the underworld, that each one of these fixes is getting more and more complicated to get done properly.”
When digging to find water pipes, “there’s now Verizon lines that didn’t used to be there, cable lines, fiber lines, electrical lines,” Hawkins said.
As the U.S. water infrastructure has continued to age and costs have gone up, federal funding for maintenance has plummeted.
Up until the 1970’s, the federal government paid for the construction of sewage plants and drinking water systems, but over the last several decades that funding has been steadily cut.
The economic stimulus package that was passed in 2009 contained $10 billion out of a total of $787 billion for water infrastructure projects. Goldstein calls the amount, a “drop in the bucket.”
Some critics argue that the money for infrastructure repair should come from user fees rather than the federal government.
According to Randal O’Toole, a senior analyst at the Cato Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C., “All the costs of construction and maintenance might be borne by users out of annual or monthly fees.”
O’Toole suggests privatizing community water facilities, citing the fact that “in the 19th century, almost every major American city had private water companies” and as a result lower costs and higher quality of water.
Regardless of where the funding comes from, experts agree on the critical role that U.S. water infrastructure plays on our economy and daily lives.
Underscoring that fact, Goldstein says, “You can’t have jobs, you can’t have businesses, you can’t have hotels, homes, if this infrastructure isn’t in place.”
In this Sept. 11, 2010, file photo, a natural gas line lies broken on a San Bruno, Calif., road after a massive explosion. A federal jury found Pacific Gas & Electric Co., California’s largest utility, guilty on Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016, of misleading investigators about how it was identifying high-risk pipelines after the deadly gas line explosion in the San Francisco Bay Area. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)
Deadly natural gas explosions in Massachusetts drew attention to the nation’s aging pipeline infrastructure. We’ll drill down.
Guests
Gregory Korte, national correspondent for USA Today. (@gregorykorte)
Kiera Blessing, reporter at The Eagle-Tribune who has covered the natural gas explosions in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts extensively. (@kierablessing)
Cynthia Quarterman, top administrator of the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration under President Obama, from 2009 until 2014. Senior fellow with the Global Energy Center at the Atlantic Council.
USA Today: “Look out below: Danger lurks underground from aging gas pipes” — “About every other day over the past decade, a gas leak in the United States has destroyed property, hurt someone or killed someone, a USA TODAY Network investigation finds. The most destructive blasts have killed at least 135 people, injured 600 and caused $2 billion in damages since 2004.”
USA Today: “The short version: What we found about the dangers of natural gas pipelines” – “The catastrophic explosions that rocked northeastern Massachusetts last month have drawn new attention to the problems of an aging natural gas infrastructure that’s prone to dangerous – and sometimes fatal – gas leaks.
“USA TODAY reported on the problems of aging natural gas pipelines in 2014 and found that leaking cast-iron mains were a primary cause of natural gas fires and explosions.
“But despite a call to action that year from then-Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, replacing those pipes has been slow – and sometimes as perilous as the pipes themselves.
“A new USA TODAY investigation of natural gas pipeline safety, based on federal data and interviews with industry, experts and regulators, found spotty oversight and a lack of transparency by utilities and regulators responsible for keeping gas customers safe.”
Eagle-Tribune: “She wanted to die at home, then the fire started” — “Jennifer Lampman has dreams in which she touches the walls around her. She touches them cautiously, waiting to feel heat, or to hear the sizzling sound that haunts her now.
“When she wakes, Lampman remembers the explosion that seared that sizzle into her mind. She was in the shower, preparing to leave her ailing mother’s house for the airport so she could return to Chicago for a few days before coming back to her mother’s bedside.
“The boom she heard as she turned off the water was followed seconds later by her sister’s screams. Wrapping a towel around herself, Lampman bounded down the stairs and looked at her mother’s hospice bed. It was empty.
“Then Penny Young, Lampman’s twin, sprinted back into the house from the front door. The sisters’ eyes locked as Young screamed that there was a fire; but even then, Lampman hadn’t grasped the gravity of the situation. A kitchen fire, she assumed. The lasagna Young had been baking must be burning.
“In the kitchen, Lampman saw no flames. Then she turned her head toward the utility closet a few feet left of the fridge, where a swirling inferno had spontaneously appeared just seconds before.”
AMIT DAVE / REUTERSFlushing toilets enable most Americans to make their own waste disappear as if by magic, but most would be hard-pressed to answer this simple question: When you flush, where does it go?
Septic tank owners, about 20 percent of Americans, are most likely to be able to give an accurate answer, because they’re responsible for the maintenance of their own sewage-disposal systems. A flush from one of their toilets sends wastewater to a tank buried on their property, where the waste products separate into solid and liquid layers and partially decompose. The liquid layer flows out of the tank and into a drainfield that disperses it into the soil, where naturally occurring microbes remove harmful bacteria, viruses, and nutrients. The solid layer stays behind in the form of sludge that must be pumped out periodically as part of routine maintenance. If the tank is properly designed and maintained, those bacteria, viruses, and nutrients stay out of groundwater and surface water that people may use for drinking water, and they never reach surface water bodies where people swim or boat.
The vast majority of the 80 percent of Americans who don’t use septic tanks are served by municipal water-treatment plants. Waste from their homes is whisked immediately off the premises, never to be seen, smelled, or considered again. Pipes carry waste from these homes to wastewater-treatment plants that, in some ways, work like a septic tank on a very large scale.
Just as in a septic tank, the solid and liquid wastes are separated first in a process known as primary treatment. Next, as in a septic tank’s drainfield, bacteria break down contaminants in a process called secondary treatment. After that, treatment with chlorine kills the remaining bacteria. Then, in some communities, special treatment technologies remove contaminants that are of special concern, such as phosphorus or nitrogen. When the process is complete, the treated waste meets regulatory standards and is released to a nearby water body—that is, if all goes well. If all doesn’t go well—perhaps the treatment plant suffers an outage or there’s more waste than the plant was designed to treat—untreated waste can be released to surface water.
The causes of these water-quality issues are complex, because the same pollutants can be washed into surface water from agricultural land, industrial sites, and fertilized lawns dotted with pet waste, but the 3 to 10 billion gallons of untreated waste released from our sewage-treatment plants per year cannot help but have an impact.
Specifically, they affect the water you swim in and the water you drink.
A number of studies, including this one from 2010, have found that emergency room visits for gastrointestinal distress increase after a heavy rain. These illnesses are believed to spike after a storm because rainwater washes pathogens into lakes and rivers used for recreation and drinking water. A 2015 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives goes a step further than earlier research by pointing to a common type of municipal sewage-treatment system, combined-sewer systems, as an important factor in these illnesses.
The EPA has called overflows from combined sewer systems “the largest category of our Nation’s wastewater infrastructure that still need to be addressed,” affecting Americans in 32 states, including the District of Columbia. The agency has been working with municipal water systems to address the problem for decades and much progress has been made, but to understand why it’s taking so long, you have to consider history. You also have to consider the massive costs that come with making changes to public works that have served millions of people for more than a century.
Combined sewers collect human waste, industrial waste, and stormwater runoff into a single pipe for treatment and disposal. (In other municipalities, these waste streams are handled separately.) In dry weather, a combined sewer ordinarily carries a relatively low volume of waste, delivering it to publicly owned treatment works, or POTWs for short, that are designed to handle that flow. In plain terms, when a combined sewer system is functioning properly, you can generally trust that when you flush, the contents of the toilet bowl end up where they’re supposed to go.
USEPA
Things change when it rains in communities served by combined sewers. Because a combined system must handle surges of stormwater, rainfall markedly increases the volume of waste that its equipment must handle, making this type of sewage system particularly likely to overflow into surface water. As these diagramsshow, they were designed to do this as a fail-safe for system failures that were intended to be rare but aren’t any longer. If you’re accustomed to a faint smell of sewage in the streets after a rainstorm, these diagrams will show you why.
Unfortunately, the receiving waters for these rain-induced spills are sometimes the same water bodies that are used for drinking water, and sometimes people swim there, too. And sometimes the overflow is so significant that the stormwater-and-sewage mixture backs up into the streets where people walk.
Is it any wonder that rainy weather often triggers a spike in stomach bugs and beach closures?
* * *
Given what’s at stake, why are upgrades to aging systems taking so long? Consider this map of the 772 American communities with combined-sewer systems.
The majority of combined sewer systems are located in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions. (EPA)
Most combined systems are concentrated in the older cities of the Northeast and the Great Lakes region, but they also exist in other older cities as far-flung as Atlanta, Memphis, and San Francisco. In other words, the systems that pose risks today happen to be the ones—state-of-the-art when they were built, but not today—that are in some of the biggest cities in America, which have a combined population of approximately 40 million people.
If you’re feeling relieved to see that your hometown isn’t marked on the map, remember that fecal-coliform bacteria don’t always stay close to home. Waste spilled into the Ohio River affects everyone down the Ohio and the Mississippi, and it contributes to the ongoing woes of the Gulf of Mexico. Even if you don’t live in the Northeast, along the Ohio, in the Great Lakes region, along the Mississippi, or on the Gulf Coast, bear in mind that 40 percent of the commercial seafood caught in the continental U.S. comes from the Gulf of Mexico. In other words, when Cincinnati’s sewer system overflows into the Ohio, it intrudes into the food chain of a lot of people.
The EPA calls combined sewers “remnants of the country’s early infrastructure.” The first sewers weren’t designed to handle the constant and huge stream of wastes from our toilets, because they were invented when we didn’t have any toilets. Sewers were originally built to solve the problems of cities that were flooded with their own refuse—garbage, animal manure, and human waste left in the open rather than in a privy or latrine—during every rainstorm. To prevent that flooding, the fouled stormwater was shunted out of town and into the nearest handy receptacle, which was often a lake, river, stream, or ocean.When flush toilets became common in the mid-1800s, they were piped into these existing sewers, introducing much more human waste, as well as a large volume of water that had never been there before. In some ways, this was a design feature, not a bug, because the burst of stormwater flushed out pipes that might have otherwise gotten clogged. This flush of rainwater also diluted the waste before it hit a nearby river.In time, though, dilution wasn’t enough to keep waterways safe and attractive, and sewage treatment plants were invented to clean up the waste stream before releasing it to water bodies. Newer cities, which were starting from scratch, generally handled stormwater separately from human and industrial wastes from the start, but cities whose sewer systems had always been combined continued to treat both waste streams together.As the older cities grew larger, their combined-treatment systems struggled to keep up, and growing populations weren’t the only factor. Time itself exacerbated their woes. In Hoboken, for example, some sewer lines date back to the Civil War. Common sense says that pipes that have been buried for a century and a half tend to leak. Over time, they also get clogged with debris or even congealed cooking oil, resulting in narrowed pipes that overflow even more easily.When narrowed pipes are already overloaded, the added influx of stormwater when it rains becomes just too much water. Now, some cities experience overflows with less than a quarter-inch of rain, with resulting risks to human health. It is common for cities with combined-sewer systems to advise citizens to stay out of the water for days after any rainfall. And now the Environmental Health Perspectives study suggests that after a very heavy rain, those overflows may be affecting their communities’ drinking water, too.What is being done? Combined sewers have been an EPA priority for many years and, after decades of significant effort, the numbers are starting to move in the right direction, but this is not a problem that can be turned around quickly or cheaply. New York City’s combined sewers are still the single largest source of pathogens to the New York Harbor system, according to the New York Department of Environmental Protection. A single 2014 storm triggered a release into Lake Erie from Detroit, Michigan, of more than 44 million gallons of raw sewage from sanitary sewers and almost 3 billion gallons from combined sewers, and such releases from Detroit and the other cities with sewer outfalls on Lake Erie contribute to the fact that it blooms with algae every summer. Last summer, one of those algal blooms cost Toledo its drinking water for two days, and this year’s harmful algal blooms were projected to be even worse than last year’s.
As with any engineering project, the benefits of reducing overflows to zero—an effort estimated by the EPA in 2004 to cost $88.8 billion—must be weighed against its cost.
“We mustn’t forget the hugely successful effort in the 1970s and 1980s to provide secondary treatment at virtually every sewage-treatment plant in the country,” said Wayne Huber, a professor emeritus of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. As an example, he describes what happened in Portland, Oregon, where a system of tunnels now contains 90 percent of the city’s stormwater surges. “Portland spent about $500 million on its deep tunnels and pumping system,” Huber said. “This has reduced the number of releases into the Willamette River from maybe 50 to 100 per year to five to ten per year.”Huber also highlights Philadelphia’s “green technology” strategy to reduce overflows to the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Since avoiding massive construction is often synonymous with avoiding massive expenditures, Philadelphia’s use of approaches like rain gardens and green roofs to divert stormwater from the waste stream going to its treatment plants could serve as a model for other municipalities struggling with the same problems.Huber cautions against relying on a single approach, saying that “green technology seeks to avoid large investments in infrastructure by keeping stormwater out of the combined sewer in the first place, but in heavily urbanized areas that is seldom an option, hence the massive storage projects that we see in cities like Chicago.”On the individual level, people concerned about wastewater can give some thought to the fertilizer, pesticides, trash, and animal waste that wash off of lawns and into sewer systems, lakes, rivers, and oceans. As citizens, they can also advocate at local, state, and federal levels for improvements. People can reduce stormwater flow by planting their own rain gardens and green roofs—and by being judicious about the way they water our lawns and wash their cars. Sometimes, doing the right thing is as simple as being careful about what goes into storm drains and toilets.After hearing about the plume of sewage, littered with used condoms and tampons, that emanated from Philadelphia’s sewer outfalls prior to the city’s upgrade, it’s hard to look at flushing the toilet the same way. If Americans want to be able to drink tap water or swim at beaches after it rains, they have to keep trying to improve wastewater infrastructure, even if the size of the problem boggles the mind.
Subscribe here: http://9Soci.al/chmP50wA97J Full Episodes: https://9now.app.link/uNP4qBkmN6 | The other great wall (2008) This is China’s most spectacular extravaganza. A hundred years in the making, costing $25 billion, one of the biggest engineering feats the world has ever seen. And, according to its critics, an environmental disaster on a monumental scale. The Three Gorges Dam is certainly a sight to behold, a massive wall of concrete spanning the mighty Yangtze River. The Chinese say it’s all about flood control and clean hydro electric power. The environmentalists say true, it is about power. Power and national pride and the arrogance of man trying to tame forces of nature.
#ThreeGorgesDamUpdate#ChinaFlooding#YangtzeRiverFlooding Previously in our exclusive interview with top water expert Mr. Wang Weiluo, we talked about the cracks appearing on the Three Gorges Dam that could lead to earthquakes in the residential areas in the reservoir region. How is this different from the dam deforming? What would happen if numerous consecutive natural disasters were to hit the dam? And how capable is the dam of preventing floods? In this episode of Zooming In, Mr. Wang Weiluo explains how exactly the flooding was caused by excessive construction of reservoirs and dams.
We have paid BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF DOLLARS not only through taxes but through various types of donations and support groups. Where has that money gone? They have used it to build war machines, space vehicles, drug culture, man-made epidemics, GMO’s, and to line the pockets of corrupt public officials and business executives. We the people have been asleep. No one has been paying attention, even though there have been brave info warriors fighting hard to get bring us the TRUTH.
For 50 years, America’s small upstream dams have provided for flood protection, municipal water supplies, wildlife habitat, water for livestock, and recreational opportunities. But time has taken its toll. Many of the nation’s dams, including those in Iowa, are in desperate need of repair. If problems are not corrected, the consequences are grave—to both people and the environment. Funding is needed, and now is the time to act.
The Little Beaver Subwatershed, a part of the early Little Sioux Flood Prevention Project, is in desperate need of rehabilitation. The problems include:
The Little Beaver Subwatershed covers 2,980 acres in the fragile, erosion-prone Loess Hills of western Iowa. Dozens of nearby projects have similar problems.
sponsor of the project, assumed maintenance responsibilities for the dams after construction. The district has diligently maintained the dams over the years, but does not have the funds to correct serious problems.
The Little Beaver Subwatershed, a part of the early Little Sioux Flood Prevention Project, is in desperate need of rehabilitation. The problems include:
The Little Beaver Subwatershed covers 2,980 acres in the fragile, erosion-prone Loess Hills of western Iowa. Dozens of nearby projects have similar problems.
sponsor of the project, assumed maintenance responsibilities for the dams after construction. The district has diligently maintained the dams over the years, but does not have the funds to correct serious problems.
Published 2 months ago on By 
Dam Failures and Flooding at U.S. Nuclear Plants (click lind to see full pdf)
