Floods in Florence put dams, very dangerous, to the test

Sarah Rankin, Associated Press

updated

5:43 pm PDT Monday 17 September 2018

Devastating floods in North Carolina following Hurricane Florence have raised concerns about the capacity of the state's dams, some of which are already in poor condition, to withstand the pressure.

State officials monitored dam safety in cooperation with local authorities and said there was at least one dam failure so far, with no affected homes. But there were several other worrying situations and false alarms about dam failures that caused panic.

According to data submitted to the National Dam Inventory for this year and obtained by the Associated Press, the state has 1,455 dams classified among some 5,700 dams, ranging from large federal landowners to small ones. private companies. This hazard classification does not indicate the probability of failure – simply that any failure would be likely to cause the loss of one or more human lives.

The data show that 185 of these high-risk dams experienced poor or unsatisfactory conditions during recent inspections. And many of these dams were in areas of water.

In the face of the storm, workers at the North Carolina Dam Safety Program identified vulnerable structures, contacted dam owners and operators to draw attention to the threat and ask them to reduce storage capacity. Bridget Munger, spokeswoman for the State Department of Environmental Quality said.

Dam safety personnel were also deployed to the state's emergency operations center before the storm, Munger added.

Director of Emergency Management Mike Sprayberry said Monday that there had been a dam failure in Brunswick County. He said that no house had been affected in the flood zone.

On Sunday night, an Associated Press reporter was with a US Army rapid rescue team in Fayetteville when a call was made to the radio about a failure of the Pinehurst Dam, which it's proven to be a false alarm. Then another call came in reporting another dam break.

Soldiers who had been resting on camp beds donning boots, helmets and lifejackets and a team deployed to a nearby fire department. At about halfway, the call was canceled – another false alarm.

A Facebook message announcing a dam in Hope Mills, a suburb of Fayetteville, failed Sunday night, said Mayor Jackie Warner.

"It created a panic because people thought the dam was broken and they did not know where the water was going," she said. The locals started calling to ask if they had to leave their homes, she said.

The dam went well.

Rumors also circulated Sunday night in nearby Hoke County, about a dam breakup. Mandatory evacuations were ordered due to flooding on a lake, but the dam was not broken, said Emergency Management Coordinator Andrew Jacobs. The evacuation order was lifted on Monday afternoon.

At McLaughlin Lakes, a subdivision located right next to the lake, most refused to evacuate.

"It was an overreaction, do not you think?" Jeff Konopka asked his neighbors.

"Absolutely," said Kim Santiago, who has lived on the lake for 24 years and saw the dam overflowing in many storms.

Two of North Carolina's high-risk dams are located at the Duke Energy Weatherspoon Plant in Robeson County, a flooded area of ​​water.

One is in a cooling pond and the other in a coal ash basin. Last year, the coal ash pond dam proved to be in poor condition during an inspection, according to the data.

Both structures were working well and no problem was expected, Duke spokeswoman Paige Sheehan said Monday.

Catastrophic failures of dams are rare, and age is a major indicator of dam failure, with the exception of seismic or meteorological events, according to a 2008 report by the Congressional Research Service.

The American Society of Civil Engineers gave a "D" to the state of the country's dams in a 2017 report, noting that the average age of the dams is 56 years old. The ASCE has estimated more than 2,000 "dams without investment in repairs and upgrades.

Mark Ogden, a technical specialist with the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, said states have made significant progress in improving dam safety in recent years. But he added that an increasing number of people living downstream of old dams, new dam safety technologies and other factors mean that many improvements are needed.

"In general, the safety of dams has improved dramatically over the years, but there is still much to be done," said Ogden.

____

Rankin brought back from Richmond, Virginia. Joshua Replogle, Associated Press video journalist in Elizabethtown, North Carolina; Claire Galofaro in Hoke County, North Carolina; data reporter Michelle Minkoff in Washington; researcher Randy Herschaft in New York; and writer Alan Suderman in Wytheville, Virginia, contributed to the report.