Workers hurriedly tried to shore up a rural Utah dam after a 60-foot (18-meter) crack sent water pouring into a creek and endangering the 1,800 residents of a downstream town.
State and local leaders don’t think the Panguitch Lake Dam is in imminent danger of breaking open but have told residents to be prepared to evacuate if conditions worsen. Emergency management officials passed out a list of evacuation procedures to worried residents at a Wednesday evening town meeting meant to mitigate panic.
Cool. Sure glad Republicans and Manchin and Sinema did all they could to neuter Biden’s infrastructure plans.
The earliest life lesson I took to heart was to never live below a dam.
The town where I grew up had a dam break shortly before I was born, and we lived uphill from the riverbed. A lot of people died. I grew up hearing them talk about it for years. It made an impression on me.
There are tens of thousands of these relatively small, old, and questionably-engineered dams all across the US.
We make a big deal about Congress passing big infrastructure bills once in a while and that’s better than nothing, but our budget for basic inspections and maintenance chronically remains too low.
Most of the money from those big bills end up going to a ton of small projects like this, the media coverage just makes it look like it all goes to a couple big projects.
A family of beavers should be released at every dam to provide continuous maintenance and patch any holes.
