The Troubling Danger of Dams
1,495,214
Published 2023-09-19
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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/wp-content/uploads/sit…
[3] ejatlas.org/conflict/yacyreta-dam-on-the-parana-ri…
[4] www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/assumptions/pdf/table_8.2…
[5] blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2019/11/15/long-consi…
[6] www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-08/fema_livi…
[7] www.ourmidland.com/news/article/Troubled-Waters-A-…
[8] www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-21/michiga…
[9] www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/2018/09/federal_energy_…
[10] damsafety.org/MI-Final-Report
[11] www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/02/14…
All Comments (21)
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I have checked and double-checked and must tell you that dams are not, in fact, airplanes.
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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.
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Thank you for drawing attention to this looming issue.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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As a dam ages, it incurs damages.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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
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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...
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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.
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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.
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Ninety-one-THOUSAND? Damn, that’s a lot of dams! 😳🤯😮
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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).
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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.
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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.
