2 Years, 2 Floods, 76 Failed Dams, 1 Dam Inspector; Welcome To South Carolina
EDIT
Sixteen inches of rain pounded Columbia over six hours. The city got more than 21 inches total that weekend, overwhelming a regional water management network. Fifty-one dams failed, leading to catastrophic flooding and more than 15 deaths. It caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. By Monday morning, 11-foot-deep rivers raged through restaurants, medical clinics and stores.
A year later, Hurricane Matthew made landfall on the South Carolina coast. Another 25 dams breached. The storms exposed a creaky state regulatory apparatus that was supposed to guarantee the dams were sound.
Like most of the 90,000 dams across the country, South Carolina's dams are largely privately owned and state regulated. And state by state, regulatory rigor varies widely, with many lacking resources or sufficient authority, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. Even the best can't always prevent accidents. California is widely regarded as having the Cadillac of dam safety agencies, but that didn't prevent the near catastrophe at Oroville Dam earlier this year (Greenwire, March 6).
South Carolina's program has been starved for funding by a tight-fisted General Assembly. As recently as 2010, it had one full-time employee responsible for 2,400 dams. But that's not unusual, especially in the South. Alabama, which has nearly 2,300 dams, has no oversight program. Hit hardest by the 2015 deluge and 2016 hurricane in South Carolina were relatively small earthen structures built 50 or more years ago to create recreational lakes. The impoundments are generally the property of homeowners associations.
EDIT
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060052851
