Dams in the US get a D---nation’s dam stock is rapidly aging.

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/opinion/22leslie.2.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print

Before the Flood
By JACQUES LESLIE

San Francisco

.........

It is tempting to dismiss Kaloko’s collapse as an isolated event, but given the perilous state of the nation’s dams, it is more likely a harbinger. In 2005, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave United States dams a D, a grade that is still justified two years later.

For starters, the nation’s dam stock is rapidly aging. Most dams need major repairs 25 to 50 years after they’re built, and most United States dams are at least 25 years old; some, like the 116-year-old Kaloko, were built more than a century ago.

As dams age, their danger increases. This is a matter of not just advancing decrepitude, but “hazard creep” — the tendency of developers to build directly downstream from dams, in the path of floods that would follow dam failures. The result is that even though Americans now build few dams, more and more dams threaten people’s lives. Chiefly for this reason, the number of dams identified in one estimate as capable of causing death and in need of rehabilitation more than doubled from 1999 to 2006, from around 500 to nearly 1,400. The civil engineers’ 2005 report placed the number of unsafe dams much higher, at more than 3,500.

On top of that, dam safety officials are so overworked that in most states, they don’t come close to carrying out all the inspections required by law. According to the engineers’ society, the average state dam inspector is responsible for 268 dams; in four states the number exceeds 1,200. It is no coincidence that even though Hawaiian law requires dam inspections every five years, Kaloko was never inspected.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Hmmm

[rodeodance]

2. the pic is good one!!

[dipsydoodle]

3. Was the most suitable

I could come up with to help demonstrate a point. Guess you need to have seen the film "oh Brother..." to comprehend it fully.
I've got friends in the south of KY and I've always assumed that to be the Cumberland valley which is in effect the reservoir. God only knows what would happen in TN if the dam went to coincide with water backed up through the valley. If my geography is a bit skewed there I apologise.

[izzie]

4. Maybe we could sell them off to say Denmark or some such place.

Seems to be the thing now. Selling off things people need to other countries so they can make money on them. Trouble with that and Dams , even the private owned ones,are in bad shape and their are lots of little ones of those around. I believe you could find some stories about them in NH as I can recall two off the top of my head. One I think people were killed and the other just took a small pond down. Killed off some businesses. I do not think either were re-built by the people who owned and controlled them.

[Cooley Hurd]

5. Our crumbling infrastructure needs to be tended to ASAP...

Keep in mind that almost all of our public infrastructure is over 50 years old now (the interstate highway system being the youngest, and largest part of it). With our growing population, as well as expected effects of global warming, it's going to reach critical mass in the next 20 years. Monies that are earmarked for things like roads and dams will likely have to be redirected into building a massive levee around the northeast megalopolis (due to rising sea levels).

[3waygeek]

6. Bring back the WPA

it could handle the infrastructure maintenance and provide full employment.