Guest News Brief by Kip Hansen — 23 May 2020
In keeping with the NY Times’ Editorial Narrative on climate change (“every story is a climate story”), Henry Fountain writes this piece: ‘Expect More’: Climate Change Raises Risk of Dam Failures. It carries the sub-title “Engineers say most dams in the United States, designed decades ago, are unsuited to a warmer world and stronger storms.”
The story is the sad tale of the dual dam failures in Michigan – the Edenville Dam failed and the resulting downstream flow overtopped the Sanford Lake Dam situated 10 miles further downstream on the Tittabawassee River.
Don’t know where that is?
About 65 miles north of Lansing.
Fountain reports: “The dam that failed in Central Michigan on Tuesday gave way for the same reason most do: It was overwhelmed by water. Almost five inches of rain fell in the area in the previous two days, after earlier storms had saturated the ground and swollen the Tittabawassee River, which the dam held back.”
I give Fountain some credit for his clear statement:
“No one can say yet whether the intense rainfall that preceded this disaster was made worse by climate change.”
The facts do not deter Fountain from then claiming – using the magic ball of “experts” – that:
“But global warming is already causing some regions to become wetter, and increasing the frequency of extreme storms, according to the latest National Climate Assessment. The trends are expected to continue as the world gets even warmer.
That puts more of the nation’s 91,500 dams at risk of failing, engineers and dam safety experts said.”
He then quotes Amir AghaKouchak, a professor of civil engineering at the University of California, Irvine “We should expect more of these down the road, It’s unfortunate but this is what the trend is going to be. …. Overall, he and others say, dams in the United States and elsewhere are unprepared for the changes coming in a warming world.”
This string of expert logic goes like this:
- A single dam failed in rural Michigan because it received too much water coming downstream.
- Some places in the U.S. are getting wetter and some places are getting drier (ref: the latest National Climate Assessment).
- In the future, some places will continue to get wetter and some places will continue to get drier (and some places, oddly, will remain the same).
- Therefore: “More” of the 91,500 dams in the United States are at risk of failing.
Gotta love those experts.
What’s the real story here? Despite spinning to story to gloom-and-false-doom, as his editors require, Fountain at least admits, halfway through the story:
The dam, at Edenville Township, about 30 miles upstream from Midland, had severe design problems: It had been cited for having spillways that were inadequate to handle a maximum flood, whether affected by climate change or not. …. But the Edenville Dam was hardly alone in being outdated, with design or maintenance deficiencies or other problems that might make it unsafe. The American Society of Civil Engineers, in its latest report card on infrastructure in 2017, gave the nation’s dams a “D” grade.
As was the case with the Oroville Dam (and subsequent posts) in California in 2017, an emergency that forced the evacuation of 188,000 people, the problem was not just “too much rain”. There were design flaws and mismanagement of the water flows. They had not planned properly even for the present, no less predicted maximum stream flows.
Fountain unfortunately links to a model-driven study that he claims: “…found that human-caused warming had increased early season runoff in the Sierra Nevada, contributing to the high water levels at the dam.”
“This study investigates temperature impacts to snowpack and runoff‐driven flood risk over the Sierra Nevada during the extremely wet year of 2016–2017, which followed the extraordinary California drought of 2011–2015. By perturbing near‐surface temperatures from a 9‐km dynamically downscaled simulation, a series of offline land surface model experiments explore how Sierra Nevada hydrology has already been impacted by historical anthropogenic warming and how these impacts evolve under future warming scenarios.”
We already know that good snowpack years followed by early and warm springs cause heavy run-off – more run-off, less soaking in — which is generally good for California’s reservoirs.
Stream flows, higher or lower, are caused by weather. Long-term averages are considered climate.
This flood event on the Tittabawassee River:
[ link ]
For the Tittabawassee River, the recent event was a record, but we find that the historical crests (highest flood waters) have, as usual in climate science journalism, been neglected and left out of the report in favor of alarming news about the present.
20 Highest Historic Crests — Tittabawassee River at Midland
35.05, 05/20/2020 – This recent event.
33.89, 09/13/1986
32.15, 06/24/2017
29.70, 03/28/1916
29.50, 03/21/1948
28.80, 03/08/1946
28.37, 04/20/2013
28.26, 04/15/2014
28.00, 06/03/1945
27.82, 04/04/1959
27.75, 04/29/2011
27.60, 03/22/1976
27.52, 02/22/2018
27.45, 03/07/2004
27.08, 09/02/1975
27.08, 04/01/1960
26.98, 04/13/1965
26.97, 03/15/2006
26.80, 04/13/2013
26.34, 07/10/1957
I could find no reliable historical precipitation records for Central Michigan, though there is some observational evidence that the spring season has been wetter in recent years, but we can see that flood events are spread out over the decades, and happen every couple of years.
So – what is the real problem that resulted in this disaster for so many residents and businesses in the Midland area?
GREED: “The wrestling match among four communities in Michigan’s heavily flooded areas, state and federal officials, and Boyce [Boyce Hydro Power LLC] goes back several years. The company and the community have been trying to get the other to pay for improvements as far back as 2012.”
And self-interest: “When Boyce stopped generating power at the Edenville Dam, which is on the border of Midland and Gladwin counties, the company let the water level on Wixom Lake fall. Four area homeowners associations that had banded together to form the Four Lakes Task Force crafted a plan to have the two counties buy out Boyce and give oversight of the dams to the task force…. “People were upset because they couldn’t use the lake the way they wanted to,” said Stacy Trapani, a spokeswoman for Four Lakes.” [ link ]
In short, everyone – local, state, federal and corporate officials knew that the dam was unsafe and would not stand up to a major flood event. But no one wanted to pay for the needed upgrades to make it safe. Local residents were upset when the power company used the water in the lakes to make electricity as that caused the water levels to fluctuate and interfered with their recreational boating and marinas – thus they advocating for leaving the lakes full.
These two overlapping and competing interests caused a disaster – not the weather, not the climate, not climate change.
[Editing Note: Several editing errors were corrected 2145 ET 22 May 2020 ]
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
And that’s the news for the day….
I have not mentioned the other factors that generally add to the flooding of America’s rivers – dredging, diking, narrowing of the stream bed and other human interference with Nature’s unavoidable need to let water flow downhill. You can bet there is a some of that on the Tittabawassee River as well.
# # # # #
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Interestingly about 8 years ago they were blaming low great lakes levels on climate change. Now too much rain which is it NYT?
Climate change cuts both ways. That’s why we don’t have global warming any more.
“some areas” get dryer , some get wetter ( carefully never saying which areas you are talking about ).
That way, whatever happens it’s due to climate change and “is exactly what was predicted”
Heads I win, tails you lose. 😉
Indeed they couldn’t keep the global warming scam going, so they upgraded to global warming 2.0 with a new name. It’s like MS Vista.
If it’s not the same as last year, global warming caused it.
Mark,
Hahaha! Spot on!
The dams were constructed in 1924 1nd 1925. Well before current standards were adopted, or even thought of. Back then there would not have been a long record of river stages to size the dams nor the hydrologic models to calculate flows.
Dams have been constructed for centuries.
But most modern hydrology and hydraulics standards only started in 1960s.
For dam problems see: Will the Oroville Dam Survive the ArKStorm?
Compare
I heard today that the company managing the upstream dam had requested the ability to increase flow in the spillway to lower the lake but was refused by federal officials because it would hurt some kind of oyster in the river.
To the feds the oysters were of higher priority than the people downstream of the dam.
My guess is that there will be no repercussions to the feds at all!
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-environment-watch/michigan-regulators-moved-fast-dangerous-dam-protect-mussels
Michael ==> I’ll have to add “Crazed Environmentalism” to the list of real causes.
Presumably the dam failure did more damage to the mussels than a brief period of high flow rates?
You can’t beat governments or their agencies when it comes to unintended consequences of their actions. Probably caused by the inability to carry out rational thought. In the UK the morons in charge let a large area of Somerset flood by their actions to help wildlife. Somehow all the birdlife was supposed to deal with becoming ‘seabirds’ with no ground to search for food and all of the ground wildlife drowned.
Ben ==> No one has ever seriously thought that this kind of crazed environmentalism makes sense.
That’s a dam’ shame!
I’ll get my coat…
Michael, thanks for the Link. What a mess and when it’s all done, blame Climate Change. Climate Change has become such a convenient scape goat for incompetents at all levels. What did we ever do before CC came along? Oh, I know, people had to take responsibility for their screw ups and fix the dam problems!
Maybe everyone can sue the mussels?
The Bret Baier show had a segment on that the other day. According to what was depicted the owners knew of the approaching weather systems, and asked for a permit to release more water. They were refused because the last time they had done so the release disturbed mussel beds downstream.
The federal government had ceded authority to the state of Michigan. Our Stalin wannabe Governor Gretchen Whitmer and her know nothing AG were the ones who refused permission to alter water flows to “protect” fresh water mussels.
It’s gonna be funny when sleepy Joe passes her over. Lol. I bet that she devil will really lash out then. Recall.
Refused by the State of Michigan. Other than that, you are correct.
Like the Mississippi river has never overflowed….
It’s both low and high, Mike, and all the news that’s fit to print more. The NYT will not be bound by anything that limits its promotion of the favored narrative that has snaked through 30 years and counting of that dreadful foreboding, with correctives that must be obeyed. So expecting them to uphold any other standard of consistent practice is a waste of your time and mine.
Michigan is surrounded by so much fresh water they can’t help but use it to hurt someone. Protection of fresh water mussels had something to do with the state ordering the dam owner to raise water levels, though the state denies it.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/05/21/state-says-didnt-pressure-boyce-hydro-raise-water-levels-before-dam-failure/5236290002/
Scissor ==> Claims, accusation, and counter-claims, counter-accusations. Some things never change.
I see this going the same way as the Flint lead pipes issue. Lack of State oversight and understanding the risks.
A 2017 EPA report found fault with Michigan’s oversight of Flint’s drinking water system, placing the most blame with the Michigan DEQ.
So like the Flint lead pipes fiasco, I suspect most of this blame will eventually land at the feet of state regulators and their desire to protect the mussels. Governor Whitmer probably already is aone-term governor with her draconian lockdown orders on her state, so eventually she also take the fall by Democrats after she’s gone.
Oh no Joel this is clearly Trumps fault. Simon should be along any moment to tell us why.
Speaking of “that woman from Michigan”, I wonder if the 10,000 evacuees will be prosecuted for violating Gauleiter Whitmer’s Stay-at-Home Befehl?
The term “climate change” is actually meaningless without a qualifying pronoun. Without qualification, it means nothing at all or anything you want it to say. As a meaningless 2 words, it could encompass both warming and cooling. Without qualification, it encompasses man-made and natural climate change. The term “climate change” does not even state if it is a dangerous phenomenon worthy of “climate action.”
“The term “climate change” is actually meaningless without a qualifying pronoun.”
Pronoun? Her Climate Change? His Climate Change?
Phony climate change, I assume.
If they were actually talking about some real kind of climate change I might even read their sh!te.
I just wasn’t sure if this was some strange usage of the word “pronoun” that I hadn’t previously been aware of (h/t Arthur Dent).
Of course that’s it!
We simply just need to all gather outside the Michigan State Senate, and recite Vogon poetry at them until the all fall asleep from boredom. That’s a mad idea, but no madder than the pointless edicts that emanate from there anyway. We should maybe be just be paying the Michigan State Legislature to merely turn up each day and recite Vogon poetry to each other. They’d do less harm, and it’d cost taxpayers less in the long run?
Aaaaah gottit.
Also, on the subject of pronouns though, from Yes Minister, on ascribing blame to a PM decision, as I recall – ‘…. not to put too fine a point on it, the individual in question is, it may surprise you to learn, one whom your present interlocutor is in the habit of defining by means of the perpendicular pronoun.”
One of TV’s immortal lines. I’ll shut up now.
Any change is dangerous (except a progressive one). Same as “free speech”.
Michigan AG filied suite against Boyce in April and May of this year. They claim science to shut down for covid but ingnore science when a dam operator needs the level lowered to prevent a catastrophe like this from happening. Now the mussels they were protecting are screwed along with all the residents of the water way.
We need to downsize this government immediately.
“Stream flows, higher or lower, are caused by weather. Long-term averages are considered climate.”
This is a common over simplification. Weather and climate pundits often forget the hydrological factors resulting from changes to land cover. A catchment today will respond significantly differently than it did 20, 50, 100 years ago under same IDF rainfall intensity curves. A 10% increase of impermeable surfaces and reduced surface roughness can result in 30% higher peak flows compared to the natural landscape of central Michigan. Higher peak flows also result in lower base flows. This is the same as saying more floods and more droughts, and it’s mostly attributable to changes in catchment hydrology.
JCM ==> Hydrology is the larger topic — in this simple context, we can just pretend it depends on rainfall. The response to rainfall on the ground is hydrology — changes in land use, changes to the stream beds, dikes, etc etc all lead to higher streamflows and compound the problems of a poorly designed and poor maintained earthen dam.
Your response indicates an anchoring bias and incomplete problem definition. Changing hydrology is the key factor leading to stress on many water control structures. It should not be reserved as an afterthought.
JCM ==> Not relegating it to an afterthought — just being a pragmatic journalist. You understand “hydrology” and all its implications. I understand what the subject is and some of its implications. Our average reader, even here where the general level of scientific understanding is higher, thinks of all this as average rainfall, excessive rainfall, saturated soil, etc.
I’m sure that some readers here would really dig into a deeper explanation of the changing (or not) hydrology of Central Michigan and how it contributed to this disaster.
There is a “submit story” on the title banner at the top of the page.
Kit mistake in story, you stay residents upset about using it for electricity, however you quote “Boyce stopped generating power at the Edenville Dam” causing water levels to drop. So homeowners upset it still wasn’t being used for electricity. Doesn’t change point of story.
ironargonaut ==> Maybe I haven’t made that point clear. When Boyce was using the dam for hydropower, that use caused the lake level to fluctuate rather than stay at the same level throughout the year. When Boyce stopped using it for power, the dam effectively stayed “full” all the time — happy residents — their docks floated and the boating was good.
The quote in the articles says they let it FALL AFTER stopped generation of power. I assume if it falls it is no longer full.
“When Boyce stopped generating power at the Edenville Dam, which is on the border of Midland and Gladwin counties, the company let the water level on Wixom Lake fall. Four area homeowners associations that had banded together to form the Four Lakes Task Force crafted a plan to have the two counties buy out Boyce and give oversight of the dams to the task force”
ironargonaut ==> There are two differing things going on here. The Bit you quote is quoted from a source whose link is given. The local residents were upset when Boyce let the water evel fall at that particular timre.
The Local residents were ALSO upset when Boyce was generating electricity, because that activity resulted in fluctuating water levels in the lake.
The local residents committees have pushed for lake levels to remain in the “full” state so their marinas floating docks are in the water and not on the mud.
WQhen Boyce lowered water levels for safety, they petitioned the Governor of Michigan to force Boyce to keep the lake full – using a freshwater mussel as the lever,
See Mike Keller’s comment here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/22/michigan-dam-failures-and-climate-change/#comment-3002410
JCM
Excellent comment.
In my region of south eastern Australia it is predicted that there will be lower over all rainfall.
BUT
More intense storms at about 5% increase in storm intensity for each 1 deg c of temperature increase.
However, it is very common for the impervious areas of catchments to increase by more than 100% as the community develops.
I seriously doubt anyone would notice if any given storm was 5% more anything.
well WAZA i do hope youre not betting the farm on their predictions mate.
cos the no rainuntil oct predictions from earlier are right up the shitter already for vic west, hit avg already and more rain coming
the ENSO is looking good again as is the revertedIOD for decentrains
and the out of season typhoon? off WA is going to give a large area some hefty rains it seems;-)
Waza ==> I grew up in Los Angeles, California, where almost all of the ground is covered in building, concrete, asphalt, or is otherwise impervious to water — almost nothing soaks in from the surface.
As a result, they have built huge drainage ditches 50 meters wide and 10 deep, to carry away the occasional heavy rains.
My local park, where we play baseball and football and flew kites, was really a huge catchment basin intended to lessen the effects of flooding — dry most of the time, but in a heavy rain, became a lake with we “sailed” is kids-built boats and rafts.
Yes paving the LA river and tributaries was a drastic knee jerk reaction to flooding in the 1930s – it has led to dry channel beds the vast majority of the time. It has completely cut off LA residents from their water resource and disrupted groundwater cycling mechanisms. The LA solution is short sighted and will require generations of investment to resolve. The system discharges massive toxic stormwater loads and puts residents at great risk of flashier flood events.
Kip and JCM
The LA River is not dissimilar to the Yarra River in terms of catchment size.
But I guess the flow differences are the issue.
Flows-approximately in m3/s
LA River min 0, ave 6.4, max 3700
Yarra River min 4, ave 35, max 150
We can get dolphins swimming several kms upstream.
Cleaning up the LA River would be an immense feat
Waza => I haven’t physically seen the LA River since about 2000. It collects a lot of windblown trash, scrub grows in the litter, occasionally junk cars are abandoned in it. Truthfully, I have no idea where it empties int the sea!
“Stream flows, higher or lower, are caused by weather. Long-term averages are considered climate.”
This is misleading. Attribution substitution is normally reserved for the political class. You must include changes to catchment hydrology. 10% increase in urbanization can result in 30% higher peak flows in a landscape like central Michigan. Similarly, increased runoff also leads to lower base flows. This is the same as saying more floods and more droughts, and it’s mostly attributable to changes in catchment hydrology.
JCM ==> Duplicate comment — replied to the earlier one.
Probably an “anchoring” glitch…lol
These days every story in the MSM is twisted to be either a Climate Change story or a Trump failure. Even if there was a drought in the Sahara, it would become a climate catastrophe probably related to a Trump Policy mistake.
Nicholas ==> Yes, the preferred stories are how Trump failed and caused a Climate Change catastrophe . . . . politics instead of journalism.
The Fourth Estate consists of mostly Fifth Columnists.
jorgekafkazar ==> Good one!
It’s interesting, that if the Sahara were not a desert, then the Amazon Rainforest would have run out of nutrients hundreds of years ago, and the atmospheric content if CO2 would be a deal higher than it is today, and all because vast amounts of nutrients are blown across the South Atlantic Ocean every year.
Everything is related to everything else.
Muh anthropo something made water too wet.
Also, slippery.
Water is a b.tch.
Thank you for this very detailed and professional analysis. The issue on the table appears to be whether fossil fuels are to blame. Perhaps even more to the point, the question is whether climate action in the form of reducing fossil fuel emissions will help; since the climate catastrophe serves only to rationalize the pre-existing hatred of fossil fuels.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/14/climateaction/
Well of course fossil fuels are to blame. If everybody drove electric cars powered by wind turbines, there wouldn’t ever be any floods. Or forest fires. Or hurricanes. Although just to make sure we should also exterminate all the cows. Except in Red China — they don’t count and we all love Red China anyway.
Chaamjamal ==> The Climate Craze is surely odd — a weird social phenomena.
In this case, even if Central Michigan has been getting “more rain” or “more heavy rains” (which is not particularly supported by the flood stage cresting figures and dates), the “next” flood crest was due “anytime” and the dam was unsafe, known to be unsafe, and its repair/upgrade was actively prevented.
Climate Change is being used as an excuse by some and the dam failure is being used as a tool by the climate cabal.
The problems with the Wivenhoe dam and the Brisbane floods in Jan 2011 were entirely due to Government policy and limits on the dam aimed for drinking water level and the poor operation of the dam and water releases. Design can be a problem if engineers are not professional, registered and liable under law for competence but it usually government policy and interference that is the problem. If there is an unforeseen problem then it has to fixed by competent engineers not government economic decisions.
Agreed
cementafriend ==> Yes, sir. Lots of reports here (use search for Wivenhoe Dam) and at Jo Nova’s: http://joannenova.com.au/2011/01/brisbanes-man-made-flood-peak/
Five inches of rain in two days is really not that much. People living above the dam don’t care about the poor suckers downstream. Man’s inhumanity to man.
That’s what I was thinking. 5 inches in two days is a light drizzle compared with some storms I’ve experienced.
Maybe it was the girth ……. (sorry mods).
“Five inches of rain in two days is really not that much.”
The dam broke.
It was a poorly constructed dam.
NOTHING to do with “climate”
But you knew that, didn’t you Nick.
It depends on site.
Apparently May Michigan average is 3.7 inch. This storm event was 4.7 inch.( 127% of an average month)
Here in Melbourne Australia I am monitoring a small dam under construction.
Since January it has withstood four ( rainfall) events greater than their corresponding monthly mean. Example Melbourne March mean 50.1mm median 38.8mm but March 5th 54.6mm fell.
Every location is different but I would expect a dam to brush off a storm event equivalent to 3 months median rain in 24 hours.
Even small dams should take 1000 year events with larger taking 20,000 year events.
Nick Stokes obviously believes that structures don’t decay with time and never need any maintenance/upkeep, or that extraneous exceptional circumstances/changes might occur. No it wasn’t that water had been seeping through the structure for decades and had undermined it all, not because the concrete had been gradually turning to dust – the rebar rusting away, it wasn’t because a bloke forgot to open a relief sluice according to design procedure etc.
Why does an oak tree blow over one year and not another. It’s probably not the worst wind that tree has ever seen – it’ s the gradual weakening from disease/decay, the increased wind leverage on the yearly increasing height. Or perhaps because a shielding wall or tree was removed etc. Eventually a critical failure occurs, inevitable from the moment the acorn germinated (or the dam was built), it was not ‘because climate change’.
MrGrim ==> In Spanish, they say “Se cayó” — which is the idea that “it fell itself”….. no one is responsible, the milk bottle, “se cayó” the kids say — not our fault, it just fell itself.
Where I live in SEQld. rainfall over two hours has been over 400m or 16ins and rain over two days has been over 1m or 40ins. Dam walls and spillways should be designed for one in 500 yr in flow surges and flood prone areas are designed for one in a hundred years. This year (2020) in Feb we had 6th 71mm, 7th 81mm, 10th 42mm, 11th 32mm, 13th 151mm 25th 26mm 26th 42mm with total for month 523mm. This summer (Jan, Feb, Mar) has been a relatively dry. 500mm for any of these months is common with an average about 250-260mm and std. dev. about 230-240mm. High rainfall is about 5 *std.dev. Even a second rate earth bank farm dam can withstand 10ins of rain over two days.
Government incompetence if they allow a dam to fail with 5ins rain over two days.
Here in Melbourne we are at about 470mm near the end of May.
The median is 644mm.
If we go median for the rest of year we will get 820mm.
One or two more big months and who knows may break 1916 record of 967mm.
“Where I live in SEQld. rainfall over two hours has been over 400m or 16ins”
Did you mean to say 2 hours? Or 2 weeks? Months? I find 16 inches in 2 hours pretty unbelievable.
That would be about right for SE Queensland. They get some major rainfall events.
Bro. Steve ==> The localresidents were more worried about maintaining water levels for their marinas and sailboats.
To think that Americans don’t understand that CC is playing both sides of the same narrative is demeaning. Just because people aren’t vocal about CC falsehoods doesn’t mean they don’t know what’s real. With the MSM pushing the CC narrative so heavily no one wants to challenge the perceived system but they know what’s being forced on them. Blaming dam failures on CC is an example of their propaganda. Is there no end to what AGW causes?
markl ==> Welcome to the Twitter-verse of Public Shaming. No one dares speak out against false ideas that have even a shred of public support. The Twitter Mobs drag them down and drink their blood.
It isn’t just the amount of rainfall that impacts river levels, it’s land change as well. If you pave over more land, then more running water is the result. If you try to create barriers to water, you raise the river levels.
Also, lakes become infilled with sediment over time, so where once a lake held “x” cubic yards of water, 50 years later it holds only 75% of “x” at the same water level (yes, that statistic is made up, choose your own, the point holds true).
So it is no wonder that a dam that is inadequately managed that was designed 50 or more years ago is overwhelmed by a rare set of rainfall events. What is a wonder is why this is a mystery to so many activists?
If you build 90,000 dams and only 1% fail every 100 hundred years, that still comes to 9 failed dams per year. It only takes 1 failed damn to create a disaster. It takes only 1 mislead or immoral journalist to then turn this into a climate-change story to fit their own agenda.
Robert ==> Yes, that’s all true.
Luckily, most of those 90,000 dams are fair small — they are not all Hoover Dams.
Kip,
Dam failures are not unusual an average of 10 dams per year fail in the US.
See the link below which states that, “A dam failure that has flooded several communities in Michigan is not unusual, given that the US experiences an average of 10 failures annually, says Lori Spragens, executive director of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.”
https://wdet.org/posts/2020/05/21/89641-aging-dam-infrastructure-is-a-billion-dollar-problem/
Angus ==> Thanks for the link. Not all dam failures are equal — some flood entire regions and some flood local farmer’s fields.
People modify their land holdings, over time, so that water puddles move off their property and downhill to the next property. Even without increased rainfall, over 50 years flooding at downstream locations gets worse because upstream storage has been reduced one shovel trench and one landscaped area, one pasture at a time. To those on the receiving end of this “improved drainage” it has gotten worse over their lifetimes and the CC narrative fits their experience, even-if not the real cause,
DMacKenzie ==> Land use change and modification of drainage systems and the stream beds play a huge role.
Piping – possible ‘piping’ (fluid flow through the dam) failure?
My understanding, at this point in time, the Wixon lake (Edenville dam) was already 5-8 ft ABOVE normal full (high point) pool elevation (AND houses were flooded AROUND lake Wixon), so water would not normally ever be this high on/against the earthen dam.
Question: would the lowered pool elevation (lower lake level) preferred by Bryce Hydro have mitigated this dam failure by being able to temporarily ‘contain’ this 5 inch rain over two days WHILE discharging water a max rate through the spillway?
I’m betting that in past this years, THIS IS THE WAY this dam survived the spring rains, after all, spring rains do bring heavier rains, and this dam is/was nearly 100 years old. I remember one occasion as a kid hurricane remnants dumping week-long rains in southern Michigan and I remember it vividly because I was at Boy Scout camp for that week!
“Michigan dam failure caught on video”, c/o MLive
Water should never have been allowed to get that high behind the dam !
fred250 ==> But the local residents don’t like fluctuating water levels — their boat docks end up on the mud. and think of the poor mussels….
Ive done dam inspections and evaluation before as my job as an engineer. This was obviously a piping type failure. The dam was not bejng breached ar the time of failure. All dams are designed with the worst case of water being at the top of dam. On earthen dams maintenance is a big issue. Usually the problem is trees grow on the banks weakening the soil. I didnt see any evidence of this. So the failure was unfortunate and pprobably not due to maintenance which for this dam would be deterioration of the concrete spillway. So..this dam failure was not due to climate change.
However the point of increased maximum rainfalls due to an average of temperature increase does have some merit since warmer air can hold increased moisture.
I can thoroughly recommend this training manual from Severn Trent Water that I discovered during the Whaley Bridge event in Derbyshire
https://britishdams.org/assets/documents/Web%2520Ref%2520Docs/2019_03_04_Maintaining%2520Reservoirs_%2520Redesign.pdf
It doesn’t add up… ==> Thanks for the link. Good stuff.
Jamie ==> I’m sure your professional colleagues will be tasked with a full investigation — and their will be plenty of blame to pass around.
The forecasts were clear. Why did they allow the lake to overflow?
Ireneusz Palmowski ==> We are not sure that the dam was being actively managed at all…..
Thanks for video.
Clearly should not be that full.
Jim ==> All good questions….the Historic Crests chart shows that this type of flooding is not rare — I think they just lucked out in earlier years.
Camp Teetonkah?
Save the Trees, Save those bees,
Save the whales, Save those snails….
Save the mussels on the Tittabawassee River.
It’s what got us into trouble in the first place.
George Carlin certainly understood the demented minds of Environmentalists.
Governor ‘Half’ Whit-mer had many opportunities to address the inadequacies of the 2 dams that caused the flooding problems on the Tittabawassee River. She chose to address other issues of lower real priorities but higher perceived political value instead.
The November elections are coming. Remember in November!
Sad to see the Edenville dam break and Wixom Lake disappear. My Uncle has a Mobile home about 500 feet left of where the breach is shown on the headline picture. Luckily nobody was killed or even injured from what I’ve heard from friends and relatives in the area. I was in high school at Midland High during the 1986 flooding event.
Kevin ==> Thankfully, this was not like the Johnstown flood of 1889 that killed more than 2,200 people.
Glad your uncle was spared.
“The Lower Peninsula of Michigan: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites”, 1976
https://books.google.com/books?id=t2RRAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=%22Holland,+Ackerman+and+Holland%22+power+plant&source=bl&ots=sEfHNesEJa&sig=ACfU3U1Eyt9G6Hy0WxBv2LNNUeowUtHwhA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjnlL_2p8npAhVOUK0KHTwkCcsQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Holland%2C%20Ackerman%20and%20Holland%22%20power%20plant&f=false
Edenville Hydroelectric Plant, 1925
From: https://www.ourmidland.com/news/article/Midland-Remembers-Genius-nbsp-burning-The-story-13778540.php#photo-17249061
Actual construction of the dams began in 1923. They were completed in 1924 and the first power generated in October 1925. Consumers Power signed a 99-year lease with the Wolverine Power Co. to use all the power generated by the new dams.
I wonder if that 99 year lease is still effective, and what the terms were?
More: Men and horses and the most primitive of equipment constructed the dams that are still in use today. Men stood in the waters of the Tittabawassee River and the Tobacco River to begin digging for the dams. Horses pulled great scrapers to make the embankments. Men driving tractors packed the soil down and moved the earth from place to place to make room for the enormous structures that were to house the generators to harness the power of the rivers.
Water was backed up from Sanford to Edenville to form Sanford Lake. Above Edenville, two larger dams were built on the Tobacco and Tittabawassee Rivers just above their confluence. Those two dams were connected by a large embankment extending about a mile and a quarter between the two rivers. This became Wixom Lake, the largest “fill” in the state of Michigan at that time and covered 3,258 acres, stretching for 10 miles making a fork-shaped lake on what had once been farmland.
Jim ==> More great historical context. Thanks.