The Troubling Danger of Dams
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Writing by Sam Denby and Tristan Purdy
Editing by Alexander Williard
Animation led by Max Moser
Sound by Graham Haerther
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster
Edenville Dam collapse video courtesy Lynn Coleman
References
[1] www.rivernet.org/manibeli.htm
[2] www.internationalrivers.org/w...
[3] ejatlas.org/conflict/yacyreta...
[4] www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/assu...
[5] blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/...
[6] www.fema.gov/sites/default/fi...
[7] www.ourmidland.com/news/artic...
[8] www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...
[9] www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/20...
[10] damsafety.org/MI-Final-Report
[11] www.freep.com/story/news/loca...
I have checked and double-checked and must tell you that dams are not, in fact, airplanes.
They are not, but they generate electricity, which helps power ATC.
Checks out.
@@route2070they also can create tons of electricity 24/7, 365 days per year.
Source?
Not with that attitude
I work at 3 dams that are 100+ yrs old. This year we've spent $400,000 on maintenance. We just had our federal inspection and passed.
Same we manage 11 large dams a few 100+ years old and 80 small dams. Not the US but they are safe regularly inspected and maintained
L-3 avionics for life
just have beavers fix them
This is probably the most anti Dam biased "documentary" I've watched.
@@legendary_soup4454lmao comprehension out the window. The video wasnt anti dam it was pro maintenance and upkeep of dams.
Thank you for drawing attention to this looming issue.
Happy
👍👍
THUMBS UP
Nice
nice
Small but happy correction: the Lake Hodges dam recently completed a full year of repair work, upgrading its rating from "poor" to "unsatisfactory." The region is planning to replace it with a new dam 100 feet downriver by 2034, and in the meantime have allocated resources for ongoing maintenance.
An "unsatisfactory" rating being the happy news is.. disheartening. Good they're doing something though. Seems there's a lot of operators that aren't.
@@altrag I don't disagree, but from what I understand the design was too old to make the rating any better. The new dam is promising, and the danger is now at least less imminent than before.
@@altrag I think it makes sense to put in minimal maintenance work if a replacement is already in progress.
I've been inside the dam and I have several pictures of the insane cracks, pools of broken concrete and dirt IN THE DAM, and insane mold growth
@@Eagle3302PL "Already in progress" is at best 11 years away (per OP) - assuming there are no delays which is always a bad assumption with large infrastructure projects. That's a very long time to be running on "minimal maintenance". @karmacrackdown's response that the dam is too old to get a better rating is what it is. I don't know the details of why that's the case but I know its not uncommon. I can only hope for the sake of everyone in the area that that's entirely due to modern requirements being more strict in ways that can't be retrofitted, and not due to them performing "minimal maintenance" on what they've got.
If you want to learn more about dam failure I highly recommend Pratical Engineering. he's got a bunch of videos on dams, and dams / critical infrastructure failure. The culprits are too often the same: maintenance budget cuts and inaction.
Was gonna say, I've already learned to be wary of dams from Practical Engineering 😅
@@candledapple the B1M also made a Video about a replacement of a dam in switzerland It's a different angle but still quite interesting
I also recommend the "Well theres your problem"-podcast that have a couple of excelent episodes here on YT on dam failures.
And he did a (2 part?) Video about the Orville Dam, how it happened and what was done after the incident.
The movie Damnation also takes a deep look at the history of dams and the issues going forward with them, also the hypocrisy surrounding their uses. It's a bit dramatized so be aware of that, but it talks about the issues with dams like few other sources do. For instance, Damnation says there are over 200,000 dams in the united states which is a bit high. But this video we're watching now says 91,000. This difference is based on what you define as a dam. The number is likely somewhere in the 150,000 range if you include all the seasonal dams.
As a child in the 30s, my mother lived in a workers cottage on a floodplain. Twice a year they moved the furniture upstairs, watched the water wash in. Then cleaned the mud out and got on with life. In their retirement, my parents lived in a house half way up a mountain, 1000ft above the nearest river. Her priorities were absolute. I learned a lot from my mum
My dad's house flooded several times and my mom's house floated away in a flood. I bought a house on top of a mountain, 800ft above the Potomac river. Funny similarity!
Areas below dams should be deemed areas not to allow new construction nor remodeling. Insurance rates will then move more people out of that location.
Yeah. Live and learn. No one should live on a flood plain. If you're in earnest, you must be about my mother's age. Still alive and kicking.
Not possible because there wasn't human made climate change in the 1930s. It happened in the last 30 years, she probably misremembered
@bcase5328 unfortunately people like living by water.
I was down river and my house is high ground. My neighbors brought all their farm equipment to my yard and left it for safety. I woke up with tractors and apology notes in my front yard. Great way to meet the neighbors during Covid
Are flouds that frequent?
The Assuan dam at the river Nile in Egypt is also worth mentioning. Not only did it flood an enormous area with all mentioned consequences to the population and the environment, it also stopped the annual Nile floods. These floods brought fertile slit to the fields alongside the river, that had fed the people in the area for millennia. Of course they played a key role in the prosperity of ancient Egypt too.
Modern agriculture can substitute the flood silt by fertilizier. Now you don't have to deal with floods.
One reason Egypt was the first Arab country to approach Israel is because the Aswan High dam could be bombed and Egypt would be destroyed.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022fertiliser is very bad for the environment and unsustainable. it should not be preferrable
Keep in mind that not all countries have cheap energy sources and many poor countries rely on hydroelectric power as their main source of energy. Egypt gets 7.7% of its power from hydro and most of the rest from fossil fuels. Obviously you wouldn't want them operating nuclear reactors and PPP means that coal and oil may be more expensive for them than they would be to you and me. When people tell you to get upset about something happening in a 3rd world country, they're saying that because they want you to give their nonprofit organization money so that it's leaders can line their pockets while spending the change left over to pay for protests and more fundraising. Egypt needed the dam and that was non-negotiable. Anyone telling you otherwise is just trying to scam you with the false promise that your money or support can improve the lives of others.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 it's not as efficient and more expensive to rely on man made fertilizer.
As a dam ages, it incurs damages.
Dam straight.
Well played
This comment has fewer likes than it deserves
aging damaging dam
You got it 😂👍
That edenville dam was less that 2 miles away from my Uncle's house, but thankfully they were uphill and didn't get flooded. The more worrying part was that it flooded the local chemical plant, which possibly lead to contamination down river
"Local chemical plant" is underselling Dow Chemical
Some have said Michigans Governor ordered the overfilling of the dam just before the spring rains came so the 13 superfund sites could be washed away into Saginaw bay and the costly remediation could end. Whitmer and her AG did it on purpose.
@@noname-FJB”some have said” and yet you say it with certainty. Your mother dropped you on the head as a baby, not accounting for her drug usage during her pregnancy with you (par for the course for Michigan women)
@@PresidentFlipFound the Ohioan
@@liampamplin3177 I’m from the east coast. Don’t insult me like that
I'm from Zambia and you did a good job talking about the Kariba. In our history class, this relocation is painting in a really positive light, it's just later on in life that I found out it was pretty much compulsory... it was more a command and not an option.
Same on the Zimbabwe side.
I mean, how would moving be an option? It'll be underwater.
Same thing happens in every country. Eminent Domain is common in America. One of the problems that exists in many countries is that any form of social or political conflict can be capitalized on by nonprofit organizations in America and Europe who will use the situations to raise money that they take a huge cut of while spending the rest to keep the conflicts going.
I've personally lived in Michigan my whole life and was one of the people who had to evacuate due to the Edenville and Sanford dams flooding so to hear Sam's voice narrate this story of my hometown is surreal, great content as always!
We just had a dam blown up by russia in Nova Kakhovka 3 months ago, and that force of water is absolutely deadly, even in ways you don't usually think of. Even now, 300 km from the dam in Odesa you can't go swimming because of all the sewage, dead cattle, cats, dogs, fish that was carried right to the sea. No one knows how many people died in total as there are no authorities on the east bank to count the dead...
honestly, as a dutchman, any piece of critical water-management infrastructure being privately owned is absolutely insane to me. Like these companies have no incentive to care about public safety, so handing them such a responsibility seems like one of the dumbest things you could do.
That’s America
you sound like one of those gosh darn commies we had to fight off in WW2! keep your “”socialism”” out of my FREE America!! 🦅🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸💥💥💥💥
That's how the people funding the campaigns want things to run. The USA is mostly made up of decent hard working people whether they're from the city or the country, but the whole thing is run by a few dozen families who LARP as feudal lords, owning huge tracts of land/companies that poor people work for them. Heck, the Wallenbergs own the US stock brokerage NASDAQ.
America is so scared of socialist infrastructure that they can't see the problem.
Yeah sounds more like an American problem than a dam problem...
You’re telling me beavers built these
11:03 “Photography is strictly prohibited” … pans to the left haha 😂
I was born and raised in Midland Michigan and I was in Midland during that dam burst and it was crazy. My side of the town didn't end up getting flooded but the side of town that my highschool (dow highschool) was on got completely ruined. I had multiple buddies who had parts of their houses completely destroyed. I still have video on snapchat of me going into my school after the flood and seeing my highschool pool, the library, and multiple classrooms destroyed. Crazy ass times.
Screw Midland. Sincerely, Saginaw.
Dow Chemical knew the dams would break someday and had drills for that back in the 60’s and 70’s. The people back then knew it rained in the spring. They prepared for it and were not stupid.
I lived in Midland during that time too and had to evacuate the area. Was super stressed about coming in to check in the following days because our area was super close to the projected flood maps. We got lucky.... The flood waters stopped about a tenth of a mile from our home.
It's funny I came across this as a BRAND NEW resident of Michigan. Rhode Island native. New to Oscoda
Ninety-one-THOUSAND? Damn, that’s a lot of dams! 😳🤯😮
chocolate rain…
chocolate flash flood
Look at the Pacific Northwest. Some of the cheapest power in the nation. But that is a ticking time bomb.
God dam it, Tay
Daaammmmmm
My grandmother lived on a canal off Wixom lake. She fortunately moved a few years prior to the break. Spent MANY summers on a pontoon boat cruising the lake. Many 4th of July shows anchored off with many others watching a 360 show. Times spent buying candy and pop at the marina. There was even a restaurant where you could dock at and get pizza, never actually went inside it because my uncle was a paraplegic so we just got a pickup order and ate it at the dock. There was a small long island where people would anchor off of and go swimming. That was super cool to explore, a lot of driftwood and vegetation which housed all sorts of small creatures and other things which for a young curious boy was absolutely amazing. Met a lot of wonderful people out there too. Edith was an old women who loved going out on her little boat and going fishing; she also had a lovely garden. Grandma once drove her lawnmower into that canal taking out a few year old sapling. She wasn't allowed to mow the grass after that.
I grew up in Sanford, so starting this video and seeing Wixom Lake immediately had my attention. I vividly remember the day the alerts went out that the dam was going to fail. Literally my childhood nightmare, having lived across from the Sanford Lake dam my entire childhood. It’s still so weird seeing those lakes today, or at least where they used to be. Just rivers now and completely overgrown, with boats still stranded in the dirt.
We also had 2 recent tragic damn incidents in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Hundreds dead and thousands impacted. Mining companies seem to be finally changing their policies to do better risk mitigation
Sad to hear this. I lived in MG for two years back in the mid 90s.
I was a junior engineer helping with a study on the failure of the Fundao Dam collapse. That tragedy, and the more recent Brumadinho failure were both caused by static liquefaction - same as Edenville in the video. The mining company at the time was warned that their dams were insufficient, but chose not to do anything... After those tragedies, along with the Mount Polly failure in Canada, the industry is starting to care much more about managing the risk associated with these dams. One company I've worked with has committed over $500 million to improve just one of their dams after we outlined the current risks of their facility. Sums of money like this would've never been spent just a few years ago.
Minor note on precipitation unit conversions: While centimeters are usually the more common measurement in metric, in the case of precipitation, millimeters are the standard. So 3 inches would become 76 millimeters (well, assuming it's _exactly_ 3 inches).
Additional minor note. Since it is metric just multiply by 10.
Whats the point of using metric at all if converting cm to mm isn't completely mentally trivial to do?
@@GGoAwayyI guess it's just like telling the size of mountains or the height at which planes fly: both are done in m rather than km
@@lordvader89a fun fact: well not so fun, backward fact: almost all ATC and planes in the world use "feets" to report altitude
@@RandomTheoriesfun fact: feet is the plural.
I was hoping to see a mention of the Mullaperiyar dam, a 128 year old gravity dam in a seismically active region of southern India. It was made out of surkhi ( a mix of limestone, burnt bricks, calcium oxide and sugar. Yes, you read that right). Its still standing because of the exact reason mentioned in the video - complacency of the authorities and political foul play. Its the definition of a ticking time bomb endangering thousands of people living downstream.
It isn't complacency, it's a disagreement between two entities who control the dam of how to deal with it. One wants to build a new dam and the other wants to keep using the existing dam.
i find it hard to believe it is made from a water soluble material? i.e. sugar?
@@bobbins9002 My bad, you might be right and it could be bagasse (sugarcane husk), for binding purposes. I'm no expert though.
Wendover Pixies & Elves you have to mention how the 3 Gorges Dam has made the Earth even more of a Oblate Spheroid and slowed the spin by 6 microseconds a day. And that is just one Dam let alone all the rest in the Northern Hemisphere.
Not only people were displaced when Lake Kariba formed, but a lot of wildlife as well. Some of the animals had to be tranquilised then moved on barges or boats to higher ground as the water level rose.
I have immediate family who live directly across from the Edenville dam. I remember staying up late that night texting / calling them after the evacuation notice was given. It was one of those real-world instances of “what would you take with you in an emergency?” They were fortunate enough to be unaffected by the flood but many others were not so lucky and that summer we (the communities of Edenville / Sanford / Midland) spent our time working through the cleanup process. Seeing how everyone pulled together (especially the flood victims) and went out of their way to help others was very impactful and humbling. I’m glad that this and other dam disasters are receiving more publicity thanks to your video; keep up the good work.
Great video. You could also mention mining dams, which are even a bigger problem and especially in Brazil, where they are responsible for two of the country's worst human and environmental disasters
When I was a kid, I read about a famous dam collapse that killed a bunch of people who'd built their homes below the dam. That convinced me that anyone who does decide to live in such a place (or on a flood plain) are just asking for a terrifying manner of death. I like the fact that my house sits a good bit higher than the streets around it...and that it allows my yard to have excellent drainage, so it's never too soggy. Not that it floods in my immediate area anymore--they spent a bunch of money improving the storm sewers in this part of town, and added a couple of reservoirs in the areas most prone to flooding. I think too many people don't consider such things when choosing a home site.
Dams should be treated much like nuclear plants in the way they shut down. If an operators license is revoked then they should immediately begin draining water levels and decommissioning the damns. Unfortunately everyone wants to squeeze every last penny and eventually it will cost life downstream.
That's the real solution here.
I think a really tricky difference is the development that occurs downstream of a dam. You literally can't drain it without flooding tens or even hundreds of permanent structures built in the eventual flood plain. There's a cost of displacing people when the dam is being built and then another cost of displacement when it's being decommissioned
@@Spencergolde You couldnt release the dam all at once but their should be a drier some extra capacity in every waterway to slowly drain a dam. If not those homes are going to be destroyed no matter what and should never have been approved.
@Spencergolde absolutely. Everything down stream is more important than the dam itself. However, none of it will exist if your dam gives out. You do have to weigh the costs of the weight of water. Pour out maximum flow capable for everything down stream to survive. I'd argue sacrificing some to save all is a considerable option too.
@Spencergolde to add, if they didn't run dams into the ground for economic purposes they would begin decommissioning years in advance and slowly drop water levels safely. Like a nuclear power plant.
I love how the clip at 3:16 has some Canadian geese just waddling around like they own the place (though I imagine they're quite confused as where did the "Lake" go?)
They do own it who are we to say otherwise
@@jplayzow I'm not going to argue with a Canadian Goose, they are mean and aggressive and have been known to hurt people seriously.
@@nekomasteryoutube3232 That's what I'm saying fuck it your lake now
They're sauntering around like the filthy brutes they are, the way barbarians would walk over a battlefield. Mostly joking, but your verbage is too innocent of a description of Canadian geese, especially in Michigan.
Just for the record. It is Canada geese not Canadian, a common mistake.
Excellent coverage! Thank you for drawing attention to this looming issue. It's a national issue that triggers local tragedies. And must involve local remedies. Hard subject to cover. Good job!
One really lovely dam story is the Elwha River in Washington. It was old and falling apart, and more importantly, it disrupted a major salmon river. It was torn down several years ago, and the river ecosystem has come back in a truly amazing way.
7:18 The real question here is whether or not Hannah accepted the proposal to go to the prom 😂😅
Thousand dollar question
6:45 this map is interesting, in Washington State there must be a bunch of latitudes rounded to integers.
I knew about Edenville and Oroville because of Practical Engineering. Grady did interesting videos on the dam failures.
I live close to the Vickery Creek dam in Roswell, GA. It was built so that a large portion of the creek's flow could be diverted into a flume that powered two textile factories. Textile factories that went up in smoke as Sherman's "March to the Sea" rolled through Roswell. Today there's a very nice park around the land where trails take you to both sides of the waterfall. Every time I visit I think about how it was originally built 170 years ago and hasn't been maintained since 1926 when another company that was using it after the Civil War shut down. Apparently it's safe enough to build a well-traveled park around it, but the way things work here in Georgia it wouldn't surprise me to learn that safety rating comes about after greasing the right palms.
When the TVA was established by FDR, a whole chain of Dams were constructed in my area. They actually used airplanes to survey the land and find the best geographical place to build it. Dad found a lot of those photos online, and scarily, the place I live now, my family’s home and only property for generations, was among the areas photographed. I still live here, since my area wasn’t chosen for flooding, but to think that my family could’ve been ousted from where they lived on a whim and forced to relocate; property is a major source of generational wealth, and it’s just plain peace of mind and stability, knowing that your descendants will always have a place to live, so the fact that all of that could’ve been taken from them, and was taken from so many people in my area, is really scary. One of the places that was flooded was an old logging town, and one of the only parts of the town that survives now is the graveyard. It’s on a big island in a lake now, and families yearly take a ferry ride and a long, multi-hour hike just to visit the graves of their ancestors. Obviously dams aren’t all bad. One of the ones in my area was built during WWII to supply power to an aircraft factory that was being built alongside it. The amount of good that they’ve done cannot be overlooked or ignored, but I think that, as for any nuanced, well-rounded analysis of history, the amount of bad they did, or if you want to think of it in another way, the amount of sacrifices made for the greater good, has to be mentioned and recognized as well.
Back in the day, there is only a few ways to generate power, hydro and burning coal. So it makes sense back then. Not so much now.
There's also flood control. Nobody can accurately say how many people are saved because a dam stopped or reduced the severity of a flood.
@@TheoryofcatsndogsWhat would you replace hydro with?
@@mmmd3429 In terms of energy, wind, solar, and small nuclear plants will be a good mix. There is a movement that removes dams and restores the river to its natural state.
@@Theoryofcatsndogs Wind and solar are unreliable for a steady grid demand. They receive heavy subsidies and that's how they survive currently. Hydro and Nuclear are the answer. Dams are great for flood control and mitigation. Plus irrigation for crops.
2:58 Wixom Lake seemed really familiar right from the beginning, and I couldn't quite place where I knew it from, until I saw that clip and remembered it was from when Practical Engineering talked about it
As a Libyan and a volunteer in the town of Derna, I cannot express how the damage that was caused is beyond belief. 2 dams collapsed simultaneously during the the passing of hurricane Daniel and thousands either missing, dead and even more than 70% of the unfortunate population lost their homes.
The fact that private entities can build these dams then essentially just abandon them once they stop being profitable is absolutely batshit insane. Profits are down, so this entire community can now live in increasing risk of being flooded out and drowned.
Yup, the government should take over them. They already do a fine job with the Army Corps of Engineers.
The one in Michigan tried emptying because it wasn't worth fixing, but the people who owned land bordering the reservoir took them to court to stop it because it would mean their lakefront property would lose its lake, and therefore property value. So they were banned from generating income by one agency, and banned from closing by a court.
as if gov workers with fixed salaries would care enough to do proper repairs
@@exit-bag Expect they aren't working for a private company that is required to continue growing to infinity.
Same thing goes with coal mines and oil/gas wells. There are a bunch of abandoned mines and wells, especially across western PA and Appalachia. The abandoned coal mines are particularly troublesome because they can flood and spill toxins into local communities and bodies of water. The Biden administration’s infrastructure bill has devoted a lot of money to filling and capping these mines and wells, but it’s very widespread, and it’s not something that should have been able to happen to begin with.
I lived downstream of the Wixom lake for 8 years, without realizing that my house was potentially at risk from the south. I thought of that direction as being flat, but higher, and any flood risk coming from the other side. Since to the north we sat 10 feet higher than the highway, no worries. But if things had got more extreme during the failure, there could have been water spread out all over Homer township in Midland county where I lived at that time. Fortunately for those residents, the flood stayed close to the river there, while downtown Midland was completely flooded.
I grew up in Midland and I’ll never forget the SOS alarms going off on my phone when the edenville dam collapsed. My family thankfully didn’t have to evacuate (the evacuation order stopped on the next street over) but I know some people who lost a ton of things. My school was massively damaged by the floods. Definitely a scary moment fs
So sad it was completely avoidable. When you vote for idiots, you often get screwed.
I'm not used to this channel being so serious. I actually really, really like it. You have a good voice and an engaging style without the goofy jokes, and dropping them honestly helps you cover more serious material like this.
Great timing on this popping up in my feed as just yesterday, an emergency alert was sent out for a dam nearby to me potentially failing. Holds back a small lake here in Southern Utah, so now we wait and see
Thank you for bringing this issue to your huge base of followers. It's something that I've been getting more and more stressed out and angry over for years now. I'm glad that more people are getting the picture of what could, and will, happen if nothing changes - *FAST* as all hell!
So much of our public infrastructure is in this same state. Part of the recent inflation surge is due to railways closing down older lines and not replacing them; reducing capacity at a time we need it to increase. Highways are deteriorating rapidly because nobody wants to spend the funds on maintaining them, even as traffic on them grows and grows. Power outages becoming more frequent as grid operators refuse to upgrade and modernize equipment. Municipal water and sewer breaking down from lack of maintenance. in another 50 years, i expect we'll see internet services begin to suffer the same problems. the only reason it hasn't already been a huge problem is that the technology behind data networking is advancing rapidly enough that everything still gets swapped out on a semi-regular basis, but that will change as the curve flattens out and we approach a steady operating level.
Nothing changes... Because money needs to go for Ukranie... While US infrastructure is at critical level in all areas.. Zelensky owns Biden...
dam, that’s crazy
*”Where can I get dam bait?”* -Cousin Eddie, _Vegas Vacation_
Brilliantly presented. Thank you.
I'm glad you mentioned my country Zambia 🇿🇲. I'm a big fan. Please consider making a video about poaching, in Zambia Rhinos were hunted to extinction. Efforts to repopulate have been very difficult
Bluewater dam in new mexico has a huge chunk out the face and several cracks across it. I went hiking in the valley last year and periodically google it to see if it collapsed yet
Exceptionally well researched as always, thanks!
They have been working on Kariba dam for a few years already and still have some years left. The work needed is immense and there will be on going work after it is finished. If Kariba dam collapses it will be an unpresidented disaster. A tsunami-like wall of water would rip through the Zambezi valley, reaching the Mozambique border within eight hours. The torrent would overwhelm Mozambique's Cahora Bassa Dam and knock out 40% of southern Africa's hydroelectric capacity. It is estimated there would be consequences for Astralia and islands in between.
12:31 i like the way battery storage is cut out of solar or wind calculations and placed in a high price tag column to the left making solar and wind far more cost attractive then it really is.
There are alternative to battery storage though. You could use pumped storage. What you do is you build a dam...
Time-of-use rates for electricity could be used to manage renewables on the demand side, instead of just using storage. And other types of power also have limits on response time, which would need to be factored in for a fair comparison. Gas can be turned on and off faster than coal, for instance. And then there's cost of fuel. This was only up front cost, and didn't cover that.
Solar and wind are VERY cost attractive.
@@HALLish-jl5moWaiaminute lol
My grandparents had a cottage on wixom lake, crazy to see this on wendover. I had to go up there and throw everything into a giant dumpster. We then walked the lakebed. Pretty wild experience for a place I had been going every summer my whole life. Not to mention this was right after the start of covid, too.
You should have mentioned the cases of "Mariana" and "Brumadinho" in Brazil, Mining dams that suffer a similar process than that of the video but the consequences are still being felt decades later, and the environmental tragedy at the time was compared to a chernobil as killed and entire river for good
overwhelmingly the biggest problem is that the majority of these dams are privately owned (and have been for decades). This means private companies got to take all profits when the dams were in good health and now the government (the taxpayer) will have to step in and pay to fix all the issues private corps let happen
Grew up in Washington state which gets 91% of its electricity from hydro. The lack of conversation around maintaining the dams was astonishing.
The Corps of Engineers dams are very well maintained and managed by extremely skilled people in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. They are vital infrastructure. This video only focuses on negative information. There is obviously an agenda behind it.
@@jakahl1470Nailed it!
The number is lower than 91%.
@@jakahl1470Information you don't agree with isn't an agenda. It's a 20 minute video that can't be expected to cover every single dam.
It's weird how scared people are of nuclear power when dams are so much more dangerous but barely anyone has a problem with them. The recent tragic events in Derna horribly demonstrated this, as more people died there than nuclear power has ever killed. It seems like only every few months there's some incredibly dangerous dam failure or something similar, but when was the last time an exploding nuclear power plant was a legitimate concern?
real danger VS the perception of danger is a interesting topic. simply put, humans are terrible at risk assessment.
It’s hard to say with dams because water scarcity and possible flash floods are a some issues to consider.
Water is heavy and dams hold lots of potential energy.
I think it's the invisibility of radiation that scares people. A giant wall of water is a more tangible threat
Fukushima
I went to the grand coulee dam for a tour from school. It is an insanely large and impressive structure. Scary to imagine what happens when the giant dams fail
I live above a dam where our creek feeds into the backend of a big lake. I’m about 5 miles from the overlook. Every time we get heavy rains, I always worry about all the people living below the dam … Where I’m at, we’re usually pretty good because the dam can relieve a lot of our flood waters here with controlled releases, but the people below it really got the shit end of the stick with location. In the fall and winter months when the lake is drained, with enough rain, it can and will fill up quick from all the runoff coming down the mountains and little holler creeks feeding into the main creek. It can cause the areas above the dam to back up quick, the flooding will start to spill out in various directions along creeks, and all that water backing up in the dam can put a lot of pressure onto it if they don’t release some it. The people below the damn are already receiving large amounts of rainfall like we are above it, so their creeks are already high, too. Those controlled releases can make their waters rise even more and cause a catastrophe if they’re not cautious… But without them doing that, we’d flood off quick above the dam from all the creeks backing up into the into the lake and causing a lot of pressure, which could potentially become a disaster on those living below the dam, as well, if it’s not taken care of ASAP during floods. It’s one of those “this way is shit, and this way is also shit but with a bit less runny messes” types of things. It’s actually pretty cool to see how they deal with it and watching all the flood waters come out when those moments arise as it’s just roaring out in large quantities, but man, do I feel for anyone living below it. The constant thought about whether or not you’ll flood off during heavy rainfall if the controlled releases aren’t done right on top of a potential burst is enough to keep me up at night if I lived below one. In fact, it’s something many in the town think is bound to happen someday soon. It’s always “only a matter of time before those repairs just can’t be repaired anymore…” and that’s scary. The amount of water that will burst out through that dam and wash away so many … ugh. See: the Buffalo Creek disaster here in WV back in ‘72. Despite it being half a century ago, it is still fresh in peoples’ minds here in the southern portion of the state solely because of how close to home it hit for many with the amount of damage it caused along with someone knowing someone that lost a loved one. Truly terrifying images and videos that came from it, and some of the stories I’ve heard from people that experienced it firsthand can help fuel nightmares. Just a big wall of black sludgy water coming right at them. Godspeed to those that live below one.
The founder of Boy Scouts of America was not just Boyce, you are forgetting Baden Powell, and Daniel Beard
Uhm its called the Boyce Scouts of America, not the Powell or Beard Scouts of America 😐
@@Chupakkafucking lol
Founder of The World Boy Scout is Baden Powell not America.
Ummm... hello!? Nobody calls them Powellcouts or Beardcouts. They're BOYCEcouts. _Duhh!_ Sheesh. 5 seconds' thought answers you own question. SMH.
For a short period of time I lived in an apartment adjacent to a river. When I moved in, the dock and stuff was way out of the water, so I assumed it was just low due to it being the summer. I asked around and as it turns out the dam holding the river back failed. It was built quite some time ago, and while it was small enough that it wasn't disastrous, it does make a great example of our aging infrastructure.
I live in Saginaw right where this happened. I remember driving 5min to see the river and seeing it had submerged an entire park I used to walk in. It is weird now driving by Sanford lake and it is entirely empty.
My dad always said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers slogan was "the public be dammed."
Dam removal is often cheaper than repairing a dam but runs into the issue off all the people who have built around the lake behind the dam and from operators who want to extract that last bit of irrigation or power "for free" since they expect to be gone before the cost of repair or failure happens.
Those issues pale into insignificance compared to the issues faced by those living downstream, in the dam's shadow, when it eventually collapses. If upstream residents or commercial operators start whining about decommissioning a dam at the end of its life they should be politely told to eff off.
There were four dam failures that day. The secord dam failed first, leading to a small lake of water flowing into smallwood lake, which made that dam fail, so then two lakes worth of water spilled into wixom lake, causing that dam to fail, then three lakes worth of water flowed into sanford lake, causing sanford dam to fail.
There are several dams along the tittabawasee river at that section. I believe their was a smaller dam up river named the Smallwood dam that was over ran the night before which led to edenville becoming unstable the following day. But also the owner was very negligent. From what I hear, the owner had received some funds for repairs, but instead elected to spend the money on developing the area around the dam to make a venue for playing music.
Video is very informative.Thank you for bringing this issue to your huge base of followers.
Like most infrastructure, Dams effectiveness is dependent are where they are built. During the Dam boom, they looked at earlier dams to get an idea of their effectiveness. However, those early dams had been built in the best spots people could find, and the spots that remained were of lesser quality and hence made for less effective dams. The rush to build kept people from doing deep investigations, only doing surface level comparisons.
saint frances dam. broke in the dead of night and those that lived down stream didnt even know a dam was built. and the death toll was unknowable.
I adore everything you do. your stuff is so well written it and present it just doesn’t require dramatising with background music. The music is totally unnecessary and distracting.
Came here to say the same thing.
Cool, a Michigan Video Opener! You’ve made a happy Michigander!
Ah ryt so it's not pronoun ced Mishiganda thought he said it wrong.
noticed a few of those dots near me in massachusetts, and i know for a fact i live within walking distance (uphill) of a "significant hazard" dam. heard lots of talk over recent years of finally getting around to dealing with them, but it can't come soon enough tbh
Significant hazard means that if it failed it could cause loss of life. It has no basis on the condition of the dam itself. It’s strictly a measure of how high it is, how much water is in there, and what happens in terms of flooding if it were to all wash downstream on a sunny day or also during the largest storm that could theoretically happen.
@@BuddyTobyTV oh yeah, oops, i forgot to add that its rating is “poor”, somehow forgot that part
@BuddyTobyTV The typical definition for significant hazard does not include likely loss of life, instead that would be a high hazard dam. Significant hazard is primarily related to economic and environmental damage as well as damage to infrastructure.
I think you should also discuss the dams ability store energy and can work in conjunction with renewable energy sources. Great video! I loved it, thank you
Were you paying attention? Among the things he mentioned: wind and solar are now much cheaper (without the massive environmental destruction and danger to life and property from failure) AND only considering the loss and decay of plant life, the effect o on greenhouse emissions erases 10 years of savings compared to fossil fuels.
@@CleverAccountName303 you completely missed the point of energy storage... So yes. Hence my comment.
@@CharlMarais247 Yes, dams store a lot of energy and a SMALL portion of that can be used on demand to fill in the gaps of less consistent renewable sources. In reality, they function more like a baseline energy source similar to nuclear than like a natural gas peaking power plant. Most dams cannot vary their output very much and most of their potential energy cannot be used without dropping water to undesirable levels
Thank you for your expert opinion
sadly, a catastrophe has already occurred in my home country Libya last week. the Derna dam has collapsed due to the heavy rain probably exceeding the worst-case scenario for the dam due to the heavy rain. resulting a around 30,000 live loss "deaths and misses" so Far.
Depressing but informative as always, Mr. Wendover
it's Mr. Sam From Wendover
@@jakobbruhspenningno its mr. productions, first name wendover
Love your perspectives, so informative and factual.
Where can i find a list of those 400-odd dams with the fatal combination of unsatisfactory rating & likely loss of life?
0:43 "Michigunder", It's pronounced here "Michi-Gander" as in "What's good for the goose is good for the gander"
Practical Engineering has some great videos on both those failed dams
Nearly direct after the dam collaps in Lybia
This is an excellent, timely video. Well done sir!
Thank you for the great video! Where do we go to find the list of most at risk dams? Where are the links to the sources for your maps? I would imagine that public awareness of the dams in their area, and their condition/age, could provide some useful public pressure on local authorities and the companies that have the responsibility to maintain them.
I drive by Wixom Lake on I-75 all the time, and I've always wondered what the full story was. It's crazy seeing a "lake" just drained like that.
It... Wasn't that long ago you really didn't know why
@@waa_baa_kee M10 cuts right through it and if you're going to NW MI from SE you take 75 then M10. Which goes STRAIGHT through what was Sanford Lake. It is not difficult to figure out but congrats for your total KZhead comment own bro.
@@waa_baa_kee Easy slip up bc M10 is immediately before 75. Anyone from here could figure out "oh yeah probably why" but you had to be all superior about it. Have fun with that.
I'm surprised how close you were on with the pronunciation of Tittabawasee 😂
This video was so good, I had to watch it twice. To summarize the key points: 1. Static liquefaction was the cause of the "freak accident" failure in Michigan 2. However, that dam had inadequate spillway capacity. If the private owners had complied with the regulatory requirements, the dam would never had been subjected to the degree of stress needed for static liquefaction. 3. Spillways are critical to all dams, because dams are vulnerable to spill-over events. 4. Many dams are just getting old, and potentially at risk of just cracking and failing (whether the have an adequate spillway or otherwise). The 1960s boom in Dam construction has created the current surge of dams reaching the end of their intended lifespans. 5. The artificial reservoir displaces massive living spaces for human communities and animal habitats (and plants). 6. Artificial reservoirs also generate lots of methane 7. For this reason, the World Bank advised against dam development. 8. As Climate Change continues, sudden storms will be more frequent and severe, escalating the needs for safe adequate spillways. 9. The 2017 Orville Dam faced a terrifying situation where its spillway (supposedly with adequate capacity) actually broke apart, leading to water exposure to the foundations of the dam itself. This could have been a catastrophic failure. 10. Fundamentally, every large dam holds back an enormous amount of gravitational potential energy. Any failure has a tremendous destructive power to any person/animal/thing downstream. Complacent people can wrongly assume the new landscape represents the "natural" state of existence.
I lived (and my parents still own the house) in the first property south of Edenville dam, immediately south of the west spillway. My parents and I were evacuated the night before at around midnight, but came back the following afternoon to grab some stuff for an extended stay away from home because we were told it was unlikely the dam would collapse at that point due to overtopping. I was there at the house, only about 300 yards from the western spill way when it failed. We were the last ones across the bridge to the south of the dam before it was washed out. Our house was one of the few that did not sustain damage because we were on the west side and it collapsed on the east side and just high enough to evade the rising waters. But the house was not accessible--except by 4 wheeling through the dried up tobacco river bed--for the next six months after the collapse. We were incredibly lucky as most people in Edenville and Sanford lost their homes, or at least got major damage. Of course, this was also in the middle of COVID so we were shortly exposed through a family member we evacuated to stay with and had to quarantine for 2 weeks. Miserable times. So thanks for raising awareness about this issue, when these things fail it is very destructive. We were extremely lucky nobody died.
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As a geotechnical engineer, I really appreaciate this video.
Dude it is insane the quality of content you consistently put out. I was never interested in this kind of stuff in school, even in undergrad - but your way of presenting material makes it so interesting! Keep up the great work.
I live in Sanford. The failure of the dams is no ones fault except the operators of the hydro power stations at the time. Boyce hydro failed to keep the dams up to standard.
I always love the photographs of "photography is prohibited" signs.
Depressingly timely video
I get so hyped whenever you guys release a new video. Thank you for making my lunchtimes at work fun!
Dam i didnot expect that great video as always wendall productions i will always watch your videos i think they're great and informative and will always watch them within the first 24 to 30 hours after you post it usually but maybe a little longer if im like really busy or my internets not working which is really annoying!!
"You're cancelling my dam project? Where will all the water go?" "Wherever it's headed now"
That is quite troubling
This whole episode was a flashback to my childhood when my grandparents, who's house is built near a river, flooded due to a dam collapse. Fortunately, as far as I remember nobody died in the process, but millions in collective property damage occurred and more importantly to us a significant loss of childhood memories and family heirlooms were lost as the basement was washed out. It took years for the replacement to be built because the state refused to fund it even though it was causing significant damage to the environment around it. Even now The replacement has drastically changed the shoreline and the quality of aquatic life due to the years the river spent drained.
static liquefaction is not undocumented, unstudied, or that rare as far as dam failure phenomenon go. It is the case however, that engineers working in civil/urban domains are less familiar than those working in mining/industrial contexts.
Very informative video, you did a really good job on it!
I'm a civil engineer and thinking about our aging and deteriorating infrastructure genuinely keeps me up at night, along with the fact that climate change is rapidly rendering the hydrology data we use to design everything from huge dams to small roadway culverts completely useless.
Perhaps you should go back to school and learn how to manage aging structures and how to curtail their capacity as they age. It is really quite simple if any thought was given to the problem. Most engineers today can’t solve any problems for less than a billion dollars.
@@noname-FJB perhaps you should give it a go yourself.
@@noname-FJBThe lack of knowledge isn't the problem. It's the government's funding.
@@kempo_95 Negative, funding isn't a problem it's over-educated twats that know little to nothing and can't accomplish shit without massive wastage of funds for little benefit It could be justifiable if you actually spent it future proofing or you know prepared it for freak storms
@@kempo_95 Lack of government funding is not the problem, selling everything off to private shell companies and not putting in any laws to maintain it is the problem. It's lack of oversight.