The New York Times recently ran this article on the deterioration of Kentucky’s Wolf Creek Dam on the Cumberland River. The dam’s construction in 1952 created Lake Cumberland, the largest man-made lake east of the Mississippi River. Now the dam’s deterioration is wreaking havoc on a local economy that has become dependent on tourist dollars, and is also threatening to flood the city of Nashville, some 280 miles downstream of the lake should the aging structure give way.

Of course, the Army Corps. of Engineers is proposing a massive patch job that will run upwards of $300 million and take several years to complete (read as half a billion, minimum). With no talk of decommissioning the old structure, the dam’s plight is indicative of many of the problems with large structure dams around the world.

Recent estimates on the number of dams nationwide put the count at more than 76,000, with an average age of 40 years. Many of the largest and most ecologically devastating dam projects were constructed during the Army Corps. heyday inthe 1950s and 60s. The result of this once unbridled enthsiasm is that virtually all the major rivers of the western U.S. are now dammed, and greater than 30% of the dams in existence today are considered structurally unsound. Add to this the devastating effect that modern dams have on fisheries and the larger ecosystem and the need to re-evaluate the continued operation of large western dams becomes evident.

Incidentally, the Bureau of Reclamation is undertaking a new Environmental Impact Study on Glen Canyon Dam Operations and there will be an opportunity to comment on the draft EIS, due out in April.

 

Tags: dams, Wolf+Creek+Dam, wild+salmon, Colorado+River, JP+Oliva

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