I vaguely recall that CaspianReport made a video roughly a year ago from a geopolitical perspective about the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over dams on the Nile built to preserve fresh water. Sadly it has been a ticking bomb waiting to cause a disaster.
You are right about the engineering of dams, live with cars, it's easy to design a perfect car, but making it and servicing it also needs to be taken into consideration when engineering these more costly structures. Maybe A I can help out 🙂
(You showed your LARQ bottle in the airport where you mention you fly frequently. The only problem is that TSA will confiscate that bottle before I could blink an eye.)
Funny you should mention 50-60 years ago because that's when I was in Engineering school. We had a course back then where they taught us that projects like those dams didn't end when the construction was finished, but went on with maintenance for the life of the structure. A sinking fund was supposed to be set up that would cover the cost of planned maintenance at the proper intervals. Since those days, it seems that project management has been taken over from engineers in charge by politicians and business-school types who don't seem to care about maintenance.
Yes, our reliance on college educated personnel instead of those who know the ins and outs of practical engineering with actual hands on experience getting their orders from those who have none is absolutely mind boggling
@@Pushing_Pixels Yes I do know that, I actually know some engineers, but I was referring to the people who make the executive decisions and control the budget
The Vajont dam in Italy did not fail. It was super strong. During some very heavy rains, the whole side of a mountain fell down into the lake. It made a giant wave. Something like one cubic mile of water hit the dam. It went over the top of the dam and down the canyon into the valley below. The blast of air preceding the water destroyed much before the water even hit. I went to see this in 1968, In front of the dam there is all this dirt and debris. The gates are open and water was still flowing down. There was even talk of cleaning it out and using the dam again, this was never done. The Italian government built a new town for the survivors.
You say potato, I say design failure. Like Ricky said, for infrastructure projects of this size, they should have investigated that possibility and had a contingency plan. It's not like an act of god dropped that water.
@@vinquinn So it isn't technically a damn collapse, but it IS a design failure. Which they are equally responsible for. The wise man built his house upon the rock.
Back in 05-06 I remember the physics teacher telling us about how most bridges and damns were built in the 30s with a life expectancy of around 70 years and we were already late in fixing or replacing them. Fast-forward over 15 years and we start to see this problems that were avoidable and many people were warning everyone about. Same as so many other problems we are already late to tackle
Yet america has no money for its own economy to repair crumbling infra, to handle homelessness and other issues. But they do have billions to send abroad to shore up facists governments or to bring democracy to countries that do not dance to USA's tunes.
But not to worry, I’m pretty sure that some politician will be promising tax cuts again next year, and people will vote for them, and when the dams fail, everyone will say “how could this happen”?
I live in the Netherlands. A country in Europe located at the North sea. About 26% of the land is below sea level, and 59% of it is vulnerable in case of storms + high tides. Add to that the yearly local increase of sea level by 3 millimeter, and the fact that parts of the Netherlands are slowly sinking. If disaster strikes, this will disrupt the entire country. A really, really large disaster happened in 1953 when a combination of a winter storm and a higher than normal high tide (moon and sun working together: do not know the english word for this) caused extensive flooding. After this, very large infrastructures started being build to defend us against the sea, and we are still building more than 50 years later. But great floods where also happening in much earlier times. So it was in everybodies interest to work together to prevent large disasters as good as possible. This is why in 1255 the first "waterschap" was founded, and a lot more were fouded afterwards. Currently we have 6 of them. Responsibility of the "waterschappen" is to protect the land against flooding from mainly rivers, but also against droughts which thanks to climate change is a growing concern. Unique is the fact, that a "waterschap" can collect taxes by themselves to pay for all this. That way, it is cut off from the yearly budget of the nation or province, to avoid budget for maintenance of the critical water infrastructure being cut in favor of other expenses. Responsibility for defending our country against flooding by the sea lies by "Rijkswaterstaat". This is funded by the governement. but despite our nation being devided into multiple political parties, everybody agrees on the importance of having sufficient, and continous funding to keep the extensive infrastructure in top tier condition, or upgrade them.
I can add to this....The high of the tide/storm in 1953 may be thought to be high.....But thanks to the Delta works (Those very large infra structure you mention) we did not have the same disaster in 1990 ..only 2 years after finishing the most important part of those Delta works.(also in the winter). The wetter had repeated after 37 years....the tide was only 6 cm lower as in 1953...also storm combines with king tide.. (My source...someone working for the government in Domburg). That day in 1990 (2 in fact because 2 storms with 14 days interval) ended the discussion if the investment had enough value due to the costs....in those 2 nights the deltaworks had payed themselves in full. In current money the investment would be around 50.000.000.000 dollars/euro's.
You're lucky. We in America have only two parties and they can't even agree on the need for oxygen - or whether we should have borders. We just spent $1.2 trillion on an "Infrastructure" bill, which included almost no new spending on infrastructure beyond new green energy & Internet, and nothing significant for dam repair/replacement.
The term is a Spring tide, the low pressure storm caused the north sea to push water throught the Dover straights, both the UK and Netherlands suffered badly in that storm surge. I did my geography dissertation on it and visited many sites to visulise the damage and distruction. The new spillways and barriers designed by the Dutch should give generations of protection.
I was born in Sanford, Michigan. When the Edenville dam gave out the beautiful Sanford lake (and others) drained away and disappeared. The flooding was devastating for all structures in the area. Every year for the decade prior, maintenance was continually put off to save the company $. They were given a small fine each time... but never fixed.
They should have taken the hint and rewilded the river. By building those dams back, the same thing will happen in the future when no one wants to pay for them.
My home was washed away in a flood in Mid Michigan in 2020 (and u thought your 2020 was bad). A dam failed and all the water rushed downstream failing 2 or 3 more dams until all the water burst out into the Great Lakes. This will become more and more common as we ignore crumbling infrastructure.
There is a solution that could be implemented with use of ultra high performance concrete (UHPC). Use of that material can make repair easier, faster, lighter, stronger, and lifecycle would be 125 years or more. Applies to bridges too. Don't tear down and replace, instead repair. Even rock and earth dams could be more easily repaired with UHPC. Look at Steelike UHPC and find out what they just accomplish on a bridge in Oregon. Same material enabled responsible engineering that is more environmentally friendly than conventional concrete.. In fact, why not do a program on UHPC and it's uses. Europe is on board with using the material because it is stronger than conventional concrete, water proof, chloride proof, and easy to put in place. Great review and assessment of the status of dams in the world and U.S., and U S. Inability to consider lifecycle cost and act.
It also depends heavily on the region and type of dam. Hydroelectric dams receive continuous maintenance for obvious reasons, and in the mountain states dams are uncommon, and very important due to lack of rain, so they receive far more attention
The Earth is in a polar excurssion. And much more. It doesn't matter. It's going going, gone, soon!! Anyway. That's why our major players in our gov. doesn't do much except to distract us,,, distraction are many and usually ridiculous.
Everything is being rebuilt here it's a pretty big undertaking with 4 dams needing to be rebuilt along with causeway and constant clearing the lake beds of foliage so they can be refilled. Looking like it will be 6 years without a lake total before we get it back. It's just a small town and much revenue depens on that lake so I'm thankful it will come back although like I said... 6 years without.
Hi from the UK, I work for a water company and my job is inspecting earth embankment dams! We have carried out risk assessments on all of ours and came to the conclusion that they all get inspected 3x a week, this involves both the upstream and downstream faces and the mitres where the face meets the sides, we also check drainage points weekly and carry out inspections on the safety valves and shafts and tunnels monthly. Not had one fail yet!🤞🏼😂
@@autohmae yes, it can do. Last year was very dry in the UK and we had very low water levels, this can lead to earth shrinkage and in extreme instances could compromise the clay core. This is monitored very closely. Previous years we had a very wet summer (2007 was the worse) due to that we had to remodel and increase the overflow capacity of the spillways so they could transfer the water away from the dam and downstream safely.
@@peterjackson2722 it’s good that nothing has happened yet but as a former safety engineer in the power industry not having a failure yet is not evidence of safe facilities. 😂😂
I listened to someone on the radio the other day on CBC Vancouver who was Indigenous but also had some serious back ground in water management and her message was that eventually water will always win the battle. Trying to control it becomes increasingly complicated and failure is the result. I believe that this is true of all of our manmade systems. The best example is your own houses. We put a lot of effort into creating a perfect living situation and then spend the rest of our lives repairing or replacing stuff. Simplicity is the key.
Obviously nothing lasts forever, especially when dealing with the immense pressures of a dam and the corrosive nature of water. That does not mean we are to simply give up. We built cities and infrastructure to conquer nature because nature is relentlessly trying to kill everything. We can always replace broken or aging things. Maybe one day we will have access to new power sources and we won't need dams anymore, but that time isn't now.
Man you need to see the damage occurring in Alberta, Canada. We have thousands of orphaned petroleum wells and facilities, leaking into the environment. No one owns them, the companies disappeared and gave them to the citizens. It will be an amazing video I'd like to watch
The book Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner has some fascinating stuff about the glut of dam building that occurred in the past and the lack of necessary maintenance on that infrastructure that has occurred since then. More problems in that area than money can solve.
There are older dams that were built in the 19th century that are safe because they were overengineered and build to last. It's cheap dams that risk structural failure. Dams on upper catchment areas of rivers are less of an ecological issue than ones build across rivers, but they can be mitigated with fish ladders. If dams are no longer in use they needen't be destroyed, just don't fill them, and make a water channel for fish to pass. Keeping empty dams in place can be useful to hold back storm surges from overwhelming places downriver.
Why do we need to stop flooding in the first place, I remember seeing a project in Europe where they claimed certain ecosystems expect to be flooded almost on a yearly basis to function properly. Something about restoring old swaps, because their ecosystems are important/diverse. Aside from that I understand that if you ve build cities in old swamp regions you no longer want or can have floods, but why build on naturally flooded areas in the first place
@@BankruptGreek Didn't know there were ecosystems being dependent on floods. That does make sense on second thought though. Yeah building in swamp areas...I guess they're just swamp people lol
I would guess there is a very small % of 19th century dams still around & they are probably small....they just don't last that long no matter how well built.
@R.-."*...The word "Safe" only exists in our imaginations as a verb. You can own a "safe" in noun form. With all the bad actors popping up around the world these days, all Dams are Force Multipliers. An explosive device that could destroy a dam would only cause minor damage if set off somewhere else. I lived on a river once. I rented.
The major dam builders and owner/operators of dams in the US are CoE, BuRec, CalWaterBoard, and TVA. I have noticed that when dams are proposed the 3 big items are: power, flood control, and recreation. The first 2 are mutually exclusive--for power the lake needs to be high and for flood control the lake needs to be low. Unwanton building in flood plains creates many problems because of large investment, covering the ground with roofs and paving of roads and parking lots that do not let water percolate into the ground but hurriedly run off adding to flood problems. Levees raise flood water so when it does breech the water damage is greater than if it came up, spilled out on the flood plain, then receeded.
Power generation and flood mitigation can coexist, but you have to design for it upfront and be willing to pay for a bigger dam (and have favourable geography).
Also apparently South America had no dams. Just 16.4% of the world's dams in the old world are just from US, Mexico, and Canada. I guess they don't have any good waterways to use...
Historically where I used to live in Devon UK there were about 30 smaller dams in a small river just 10 miles long each one with a leat and wall, powering workshops, forges, grain milling etc for about 800 years. These were sustainable and designed to be cleaned out every 10 years or so by opening a low sluice gate and allowing the collected mud to flow down the river, thereby giving some of the irrigated fields a top up and cleaning out the dam holding lake. Our mega-dams are wonderful on paper, and offer considerable power storage and stability to our grid systems, but all too often they do not include long term maintenance facilities. Draining the refilling periodically is one good idea which allows all sorts of maintenance. I think with large dams its too easy to become complacent, because they appear to be stable, like natural lakes, whereas in fact they store a great amount of potential energy. Great clip by the way.
The dams in Libya did not store water. They were meant to check flash floods and hold sediment during rare rain events in that arid region. The flood that wiped out Derma would have been catastrophic anyway, the failure of these flood control structures made it worse.
Dams should not be designed to hold a certain amount of water, they should be designed to hold water far above the brim, with at least 10 m to spare above it. Why ? Well, if they are put in series, and one breaks, the rush of water needs that much clearance to go over the second and third and such or you risk cascade collapse. If you think a dam breaking is bad, wait till you see a cascade collapse. Also dams shouldn't be constructed much higher than water level that they are supposed to hold. It's better they overflow when filled over capacity, than breaking due to being pressured over it's design specs.
A few years ago when Nashville flooded (2010), we found out about Wolf Creek dam in Kentucky was weak and it is being repaired, but it took several years of pouring concrete INSIDE the already existing dam. I believe it is a combination of earth and concrete, but I have not gone to review it myself. Yes, dams can be dangerous, but they also are helpful. Not all are bad or good, and need to be reviewed individually.
Man. Y’all forget where uncle manny came from. He was from extreme poverty in the Philippines. To put things into perspective. He was so poor there wasn’t enough money for a pair of shoes until he was 12 years old. He went from 108 lbs to 154 lbs because once he started winning he had FOOD.
Lake mead should be drained in favor of more efficient dams in Utah and Colorado as well as cisterns in Nevada, Arizona, and California. 1 million acre feet of evaporation is too much water for the southwest to "spend" on a reservoir.
I'm currently in Ladakh, there was a glacial lake blowout a couple days ago which took out a dam and killed over a hundred people, triggered by a rain bomb which are becoming more common in the region. The authorities were told ten years ago that this was in danger of happening, but did nothing. There are dozens if not hundreds of glacial lakes at worse levels of threat all throughout the region, and nothing is being done about any of them.
That's cute. You have weaponized weather by calling a "wet microburst," a "rain bomb." LowTech, I would curtail your use of using four letter words to describe complex systems, for humanity's sake. The "bomb" in this case was a dam, built by Humans. Mother Nature was simply doing her thing, while Politicians lived in their tiny little Bubble, on high ground.
I live downstream from kinzua dam, in Pa. It is said, that if it fails, it would cause devastation all the way to the gulf of Mexico. It has been marked as a major target if there were a war. It is an earthen fill and concrete dam, built on a known minor geologic fault. Do I worry? Yes
Love the fact that you just brush over the Oceania dams like they are an insignificant amount, even though its more than the combined total of Europe and Africa (which you feel are relevant enough to highlight).
it is estimated 90% of dams in the US are under 10 ft tall and not even registered. Many dams in Oceania are also smaller. so while they are large in # they less massive.
We need to rewild more wetlands & reintroduce beavers in correct areas. We need to free up natural waterways to improve salmon runs, nutrient flow to inland areas & estuaries biodiversity. *If we use modern advanced nuclear energy options we wouldn't need to dam all our rivers & messing up all our natural waterways. We can engineer natural water overflow areas to utilize and not waste any influx of fresh water we get from rain storms, etc. If we just keep functioning how we have been, we will continue to see freshwater systems going in the wrong direction, declining biodiversity and water/soil quality.. the list goes on. We really should enhance our society into a new era of living & finding ways to help our surroundings flourish because the more the environment around us flourishes, the more we flourish. It's a win win if we approch things right.
One very important thing you failed to mention was the 1959 Egypt Sudan Nile river water allocation agreement both countries signed, the major issue is that agreement excluded Ethiopia in the negotiations but Egypt expected Ethiopia to abide by that agreement, that is why Ethiopia went ahead with the construction of the dam. That agreement didn't include Ethiopia. Another thing never mentioned in this video is that Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world, only 33% of the population has access to on-grid electricity and that dam will provide a massive boost to that number. Ethiopia needs that electricity the dam will generate, they need it to fight poverty for a start, it is almost impossible to run a business without a reliable power source and all the other things having a reliable power supply provides. And to generate electricity water has to be released, there is no other way to generate it so saying Ethiopia can withhold releasing the water for months is disingenuous
no they can for the next few years. and then if flow is managed properly, the could close the dam for a few months at a time. but there is sill the White Nile.
The dam in central Michigan failed because Michigan refused to allow the to relieve the damn as he had been doing for years at that time of year. When you leave the water in an Earthen Dam structure like that for that long yes it liquefies the soil. Which is why the standard was was to not allow the damn to get anywhere near the amount that people thought it could hold. Another issue it had was that it had electrification capability that the state refused to let him use or even allowed the owners to allow the spillways of the electrification portion to reduce the pressure on the damn. The state required him to hold back the water until it failed like they knew it would and then blame the owners. And that is a matter of record. He had been telling them for some time that this was going to fail and they refuse to allow them to relieve the pressure.
extreme weather events are not becoming worse and more frequent, they are just reported on more and hyped more for justification that global warming, cooling, change is happening.
@@matthewgoodchild6763 oh they notice, if its hot outside, its global warming, if its cold outside, its global cooling, and in between when its something like 70 to 80, it's climate change.
The problem with the power grid is not adding additional lines to handle the additional load do US population has doubled since the transmission lines were originally built and not enough I’ve been added, you can only shove so much power down 1 Wire
Love your comments about maintenance, as it needs to be build into the design (be it a dam, building, machine) - I am have a tehcnical background and work with Engineers and usually the design is good, but maintenance and logistic support are not understood. What is the maintenance process through to who is responsible even during the build phase (all the stock purchased - is it stored and maintained correctly). It could be a battery buried in the design eg: smoke alarm, processing card that is used in monitoring. Sometimes the battery is already expired or the processing card is no longer available and we need extra spares for the life of the project. I might be biased, but have a clear set of requirements up front including maintenance combined with good technical input have made the whole design to implemenation a abosolute joy and any issues where relativetly easy to solve. Thank you
The idea of Dams is great but the reality of them are aweful. Sure its clean energy but at what cost? Honestly i wish this country would get over its fear of Nuclear energy because it has gotten alot safer over the years and with even more put into the development of that technology we could make it safe enough to use in cars one day. Imagine having a car that you almost never have to refill with fuel you could drive for years without ever having to have the fuel replaced.
Should have detailed the Oroville dam disaster. That was nearly a massive life threatening failure and had some nice engineering feats to preserve the dam.
In the end, though, because of the geology, the dam will fail again in the future. They just built it in a bad location and it will never stop eroding. The best they can do is mitigate damage over the decades. Or stop using it.
@@plektosgaming the dam did not fail, the spill way did . True the failure did put the dam in risk of failure but the spill way has since been reconstructed.
@@dwainsellers6453 This is why I thought it deserved some attention. The reconstruction of the spillway with recognition that the underlying geology was at risk, the re-engineering was magnificent!
@@dwainsellers6453 The spillway is part of the dam's overall design, is it not? Maintaining it properly is also part of the overall upkeep as well. Design defects as well as poor upkeep were found, in addition to the overall stability of the design being... questionable. That is, any overflow that the spillways can not contain will cause large scale erosion down to the bedrock. They still built it, causing a threat that will always be there every time a major storm hits. And it gets even better as research afterwards pointed to the department in charge cutting costs, hiring a recent student with only 2 years on other projects to design the spillways, (to save money over experienced experts), and waiving their hands at safety concerns, considering cracks in the cement to be "normal" during inspections. Typical politics and cost-cutting. So.. they "rebuilt it. The new spillways are indeed better, but the issue still looms as it is built on very poor rock. So we will always be throwing money at fixing it and maintaining it. Or in the State of California's game plan, build it and forget it until something happens.
We must also remember that modern dams were made with concrete with an average life that can vary from 50 to 100 years. (not the Roman cement which improves with age and which we can admire after 2000 years) With the older and larger dams in Europe and the US we are very close to that limit. By also adding "limited" maintenance, the risk of catastrophic failure increases every day.
Leave it to the guy who's name ends in vowels to pat Romans on the back. Your ancestors were probably their slaves, but you prefer geo-history over reality. Show me a Roman structure that resists the same pressures as a medium sized dam. What you see left over from Romans are decrepit houses of murder, a leaning tower, and some elevated water pipes. Wow.
I think that, if dams are to be built, there should be wind-powered pumps and stairways with levies, to let fish travel upstream by jumping from one small reservoir to the next until they get above the top of the dam, then do the same thing to get down on the other side, a small windmill pumping water to keep the stairway filled all the time, excess water going form one such reservoir to the next one downstream. Also, they should be built such that a second dam can be built downstream (ideally) or upstream (if not possible/feasible otherwise)to allow for the first one to be removed later on, for safety reasons. And they should also be overengineered, and overmaintained, to make sure that nothing breaks. Sure, that would require more money allocated for building and maintaining them, but it's better to be more prepared than less prepared.
I'd like to hear about that too. When ya think about it in physics terms, "an object in motion tends to remain in motion until a force acts to change it". Stopping billions of cubic meters of flowing water has to have an effect on Earth itself, in that; a) we've effectively put the brakes on the flow of those same volumes and b) the sheer mass (I'd think) reallocated to different geo-locations (other than as Mother Nature has created) has to throw off the equalizing/stabilizing force of *flowing* water. I'd guess that is a part of the explanation of increasing motility of the North / South poles. (Procession has been increasing both in magnitude and rate of change for decades.) I wonder if another part of the explanation of what is termed to be global warming is as a result of other *cumulative ancillary factors* such as shooting billion pound payloads out of earth's atmosphere? Near the 49th parallel and I'm seeing a certain cyclical trend in weather patterns that tend to swing above average for about two weeks, then below average for about the next two weeks. I've been seeing this trend for years. I lien Earth's spin to that of a galactic spinning top. If one placed an *out of balance weight* on any spot of the top, the top would no longer spin (apparently) motionless but wobble on it's spinning axis. Right or wrong?
Brilliant discussion, as always, Ricky. I believe that the mega-project dams (and pubic works in general) are going to give way to smaller more incremental solutions. We don't NEED Hoover Dam to generate electricity; a series of much smaller spillway dams powering smaller generators would do the same thing. Just as we went through the super-computer phase before arriving at cellphones and tablets; I believe the aging mega projects will follow the same development curve. We will arrive at micro-hydro (there are generators available on Amazon!). Instead of huge, impressive feats of engineering, we will move to much more clever, cheaper, and more eco-friendly distributed solutions.
It’s more difficult for govt officials to skim off the top with smaller projects, though. One aspect of the “military industrial complex”. are large engineering firms like Bechtel that take US tax dollars for large international projects that hinder more than help the locals but enrich the corrupt “leaders” of that nation and ours.
Québec has a number of very large dams and relies almost entirely on those dams for power. They are very closely watched as failures of those dams would cripple the province. Electricity is our main source of heating. We came really close to a worse case scenario in 1998 and know all too well just how much we rely on electricity.
There's a state in Australia (Tasmania) that runs entirely on hydropower. They have several dams, that also supply drinking water. Losing one would be a very big deal.
Your comment about not budgeting for operational maintenance or decommissioning infrastructure is so true and so worrying. And the classic problem around the world is the decommissioning & removal of nuclear power stations. And yet we keep building more when we haven’t even got plans in place to safely store waste from nuclear plants and nuclear submarines that are no longer in service and which are costing 10’s of millions to just keep safe. And yet successive Governments just keep kicking the ball down the line.
The maintenance issue is much bigger than you think. It is not just mega projects that we need money for maintenance. Many towns and cities are not able to do proper maintenance on their infrastructure - sewers, potable water, and roads. We are in an unsustainable situation for the future.
Hard men make good times. Good times make soft men. Soft men make hard times. We are headed for hard times. Infrastructure is vital and necessary. It’s expensive and it needs to be maintained. That’s a fundamental function of government. Teaching kids about gender ideology is not a function of government. We need to get our priorities straightened out.
Removing dams is certainly expensive. Where I live, there's a $130 million project to remove a dam built 110 years ago that used to be used for hydroelectric power. This dam is only 428ft wide and 58ft tall. There is also an environmental aspect to dam removal. This project will ruin 30 acres of a park to bury what is considered contaminated sediments.
it is because of the immense mass of the water being held at higher elevation. kind of like putting your arms out when you spin. the variance is in milliseconds.
I studied your water bill! 14:48 It's no wonder California is running out of water. I pay $250 Canadian for 11,000 liters of water (about 400 cubic feet). That lasts me 4-6 weeks. I collect rain water for the garden, and if it's a dry summer, my lawn looks bad. I know it's apples to oranges because you're in a desert so rain water not really an option, but 15-20 times more?
He is in San Diego, that's not the desert. He is south of the Antelope Valley mountains. Part of my life, I grew up in the desert, North of the Antelope Valley mountains in the Mojave desert.
Out of the 8 years (1984-1992) I lived in the desert. I saw enough rainfall one time and only one time, that actually turned the desert into a thriving green landscape. That was in 1992. It was the only time I witnessed the beauty of the desert.
That's actually pretty standard pricing for a water bill. The volume used is insane though, and that's where the penalty rates kick in and make such a high total. So the bill is for 2 months, for 58k hcf. Meaning they used something like 43,384 gallons over a 2 month span. By comparison, my water district in western Pa charges $120 per quarter ($80 for a 2 month period) for a 3/4" meter and $5.26 per thousand gallons ($3.93 per hcf). So an equivalent volume here would be around $310 ($322 with the fire meter charge) for a 2 month period.
The uTuber's data set is spot on for the channel name. Don't bother a hack while they use decimal places on their spread sheets for Human Deaths or mix words like "hoarding" and "storing" water when Egypt and Ethiopia are concerned.
Excellent video! I had no idea there were so many dams around the world! Thank you for covering this topic. Try getting a politician on board with selling maintenance programmes along with infrastructure projects... Good luck with that! People are remarkably short sighted when it comes to spending money. Especially when it's not their life on the line.
My take to all constructions are to make a full lifecycle assessment, including risk, maintenance, emergency and deconstruction. A yes, if all points checks out ok.
Look at the Oroville Dam. Huge spillway failure and its an earthen structure. As a kid i remember watching it being built. Klamath River. You miss pronounce Klamath think of it like a clam and meth. Clam-ith.
1:16 They can 'upgrade' structural integrity of each dam at risk by adding metal bracing outside in honeycomb configuration braced both from the sides as well as the ground. Since these are metal only braces, they can be applied quite quickly and at a low cost, if they have an engineer that can calculate and foresee the expansion coefficients of metal during both hot and cold and also apply a cooling/heating or possibly pressure system to account for both shrinkage and expansion of metal during temperature differences. The pressure system would be worthwhile, since it can be done on the fly, while using the dam's own pressure as a workforce. I'd estimate a few million $ per dam.
You have for got to mention the Gardner Dam in Saskatchewan which is 2 miles wide at it's widest and 175 miles long. Ones of the largest earth filled dams in the world completed in 1967. The also fills three lakes Buffalo Pound, Black Strap and Qu'apple.
There are at least 7 reasons that dams are used for, some are extremely important: Water storage for use year round - a reservoir. Flood control - This reason may be so important that an old dam can't be removed - downstream would be flooded by a heavy rain. Hydroelectric power generation - can be very important. Irrigation - most water is used for growing crops. Navigation - makes the river navigable by ships. Recreation - watersports. Fishing - guys just like to brag about the fish they caught. So dams are often so important for so many reasons that it's foolish for humans to allow them to become unsafe due to lack of maintenance. Don't allow our infrastructure to decay and as Ricky said, "be covered in bird poop."
Building new dams as electric battery storage makes sence such as the new Coire Glas project in Scotland to store excess energy from wind turbines. there are a lot of hydro schemes in Scotland and as far as I know they have a good safety record and many have fish ladders or passes allowing the salmon to continue upstream, this however costs more.
It always amazes me how simple principles such as “lifetime ownership costs” apply to so many things yet are seemingly overlooked like you alluded to with the car ownership analogy. I think as humans we just have a hard time grasping the costs required to PREVENT disaster and categorize that as wasteful. Instead, we prefer to see the disaster being repaired no matter what the cost- as long as we are not affected, of course. Great video. 👍
I'm living in New England and when I came here in the late 70's, a bunch of privates dams were failing. When the people who built them were done, they walked away and the Government was fine. Big or little
I live down stream from the Edenville Dam. I'm about 6 city blocks from the river in Saginaw. My cousin and his family live right on the river in Midland and had to borrow my boat to get things out of his house. It was pretty crazy! But this river system down stream use to flood almost that bad every couple years. My cousin just finished repairing his house from another flood a week before the dam broke.
Normally, though, people would settle well above where it floods. The reality is any place built in a flood plain is on borrowed time. Be it 2 years or 200 years from now, it will eventually be under water again. They do plan to rebuild it, but trust me, it'll be built to a price, use overseas steel, and more... I'd honestly plan to move to higher ground as soon as is practical if you plan to be there longer than another decade or so. My own relatives in Missouri finally, after 60+ years on the same farms, moved to higher ground above the floods. And never looked back. Because like clockwork, every 15-20 years, the place would flood. They still own the land, but the houses are long gone. - just some sheds for equipment.
It is far too simplistic to say that earthen dams are more dangerous than concrete dams. It is a matter of many issues such as site conditions, design, construction, and maintenance. I work on hundreds of dams close to 100 years old or older. Maintenance is key, but the value of the power generated is not worth much today. The value of water management and real-estate is where money for upkeep and maintenance must come from. Unfortunately, this requires government regulations and control. All of our aging infrastructure are ticking time bombs.
Good point about the real estate. In May of 2019, we had historic rain and flooding in tulsa. The Keystone Dam at keystone Lake is along the Arkansas River, which flows east into Tulsa before turning south close to our downtown area. They were releasing water as fast as they could from the dam due to rising levels, but holding back as much as they could at the same time due to flooding of the river. River and lake levels got WAY higher than I have ever seen them. Growing up on the lake, we backed up to core. I called my dad and he said the lake was almost in his back yard. From what I understand, core owns the max flood plain area around the lake, which means the lake was pretty well maxed out. He wasn't concerned, because if water got much higher, it was going over the dam. They were playing a delicate game. Either water was going to breach the top of the dam, potential dam failure which they were monitoring 24 hrs, or they were going to have to flood properties downstream. Ultimately, they had to flood properties and towns downstream, south of tulsa. I live right near downtown, maybe a mile or less north of the river before it turns south. I am on much higher ground, but people south of me in the low lying areas were evacuated. There are levees along the river where it runs east, and there was massive concern the earth formed levees would fail due to lack of maintenance over they years. They had military trucks and personnel patrolling the length of the levees. I don't think any of them failed, at least on the north side. However, a lot of property was flooded in low lying areas on the south side of the river, and downstream, south of tulsa. I have no idea how much power that dam even generates, but it can't be much in the scheme of things, as most of our power is via nat gas and coal, However, the floods easily cost millions in property damage. If the dam were to have failed, it would have been catastrophic. I couldn't tell you how bad it would be if there were never a dam there, as I would imagine the city layout would be much different. I imagine the river would have gotten much higher with even more unregulated flow into from the rivers upstream. Assuming the same city layout, I imagine the ability to somewhat control the river levels is what saved most of tulsa. On the flip side, a dam failure releasing that much backed up water, pressure, and energy would cause significantly more damage than an unregulated river.
As per usual, excellent presentation, Ricky D. Only, you missed a huge factoid in the maintenance of dams: that these cause huge soil deposition upstream of the dam. This is because when water slows, the suspension of particles is solution drops out and desposition forms. So, in time, this dammed area fills in with sediment which eventually has to be removed or risk damaging the structure entirely.
FWIW, you REALLY need to keep your units off measure consistent. At about 8:45, you start with cubic meters, then switch to acre-feet, and later switch back to cubic meters. Needless to say, acre-feet are orders of magnitude larger than cubic meters and it is easy to get confused since you switch back and forth when making comparisons... I hope you'll try to be more consistent in the future.
Visited the Teton Dam weeks after it failed, was surreal at the overlook with a idealic display panel showing all the benefits and then looking down in the canyon this (couple hundred ft high?) earth damn was half missing. Washed out upon 1st fill and destroyed small town miles away.
Latest major dam disaster occurred this week. Chungthang Dam, India. Apparently their 2nd largest hydroelectric dam. Collapsed due to glacial lake outburst. Numerous known fatalities but at this time, too early to assess number of dead and missing.
Scare tactics don't help anyone. Dams require constant maintenance that, if neglected, make them a danger or Safety Risk. In corrupt countries and also in America where many of the structures have been privatised, this maintenance is often not done because it's not seen as profitable. Corruption induced lack of maintenance is the biggest threat to Dam Safety.
SMR mass production anyone? I am reliably informed that it can only take months, (PM Kev said), not years or decades to manufacture upgrades to the "walk away safe" technology.
That confused me too, but there are actually a lot of dams in south america. A quick search says 1922 reported. However, divided by the 575,000 total dams he stated, it is only .3%, so maybe it wasn't worth mentioning.
I live a block away from the Suwannee River, which I've heard is the longest undammed river in the US (though Canada's undammed Yukon River makes that statistic kinda lame). We have a lot of folk paddling the river, enjoying its slow flow from the Okefenokee Swamp (our biggest swamp?).
There are hundreds of smaller dams in the US that are privately owned and very rarely get inspected and don't have proper maintenance done. Some are as small as creating a lake for a specific neighborhood which are generally earthen dams. Often there are people that live literally feet away from these dams downstream, and if they failed the chances of loss of life are very high. We need to be more careful as to where dams are built, and who is responsible for repairs when the owner can't or refuses to. As in most things, there needs to be a more robust regulatory structure in place that is lacking now.
Water is life. We need to stop building dams to hold back water and start building dams to hold back floods. I have 72 acres and get 41 inches of rain per year. I placed 4acres into ponds as high on the hillside as I could and use the water for irrigation. as for the rain, most of it comes at one half to one-inch intervals that are completely absorbed by the ground. once a year we get 6 to 10 inches in an hour that fills my upper 3-acre pond if it is four feet low and it usually is. The big dams near me (Denton NC) at the times of floods have massive amounts of water going over the spillways. They can't handle it and only use about 10% of the runoff for electricity where if they captured the floods, they could be getting 100% (my opinion and observation, no hard data).
I've worried about dam failure since 1997 when I lived in a town next to one built on a fault line. Twice I felt earthquakes from a neighboring State which fortunately is a different fault. While the State Park and Dept of Engineering have made numerous smaller levies and the dam releases water fairly often I still can't believe an apartment complex was built directly below or in line of the flow should it breach. There are a a dozen buildings and 2 exits, both low ground.
Wixom lake and the edenville dam and the sandford family (dam was overtopped when Wixom drained) are not far from me. I had used both lakes and now they are gone. The dams are being rebuilt, but the destruction was real. It's been years and things are still. It back to normal... and they never will. Dams are great and helpful things. When they fail you get to witness mother nature's pent up fury.
Brazil is one of the champions in renewable energy because we have hydroelectric power, India and many African countries solved their agriculture crisis by building many small dams using simple tools to store water. We can't really live without dams, if anything, as we push for renewable energy, they will become more common.
Quick thoughts. Earth dams as a type are not deficient. Functional deficiencies are to do with poor engineering, inadequate supervision during construction; contractor's failings and lack of maintenance in use. I live in South Wales, UK. High rainfall and large catchment areas have provided many man-made reservoirs. The UK's highest dam is an embankment dam at Llyn Brianne, which turned fifty years old this year and is still providing water for Swansea. The dam was designed by Alastair Binnie, expert engineers in dam construction all over the world. I am biased, but to me there is something particularly special about a well engineered civil engineering structure that does its job well and sits perfectly in the landscape, which Brianne does
Earthen dams are indeed deficient. As such, they require constant upkeep to keep nature from reclaiming them. This can be done, of course. The one you mention in the U.K. is a good example. But most governments put things like this about last place in their budget, along with things like replacing sewers.
Governments and utility companies might baulk at dam maintenance costs, but the cost of cleaning up a dam failure, and the liabilities that come with it, will be much more expensive.
Trillians and Trillions of dollars later: Nothing BUILD. Nothing is BACK to the way it was, and nothing is BETTER. But are kids now know men can be women
The US built a lot of infrastructure in the past, but in the last 40 years one political party has had a mantra of reducing taxes to a minimal level and still complaining about how high they are, so governments defer maintenance sometimes until it is too late. On the Columbia River where I live there are 13 dams that produce electricity, control floods and provide irrigation that turn eastern Washington from a desert to an agricultural powerhouse. They also make the water navigable for barges and other boats and on the Snake River they are talking about removing four dams on the lower river that give Idaho a way to cheaply ship grain to markets that wouldn’t be possible by train or trucks. A lot of the impetus for removing the four dams is to allow Salmon to return higher up river, but I believe warming has already made those waters too warm for Salmon to live there and removing the dams would mean power would need to be generated by coal instead of hydro until more renewable power could be put in place. Happily a lot of new hydro projects don’t need to impound water like they did in the past because turbines can be much smaller and more efficient, so water can come out of a river, run through the turbine and return downstream like the Woods Creek project near my house. There is another one like that from over 100 years ago at Snoqualmie Falls where the power was originally needed to move electric trains over the mountain grades and through tunnels that are miles long that with steam and diesel would kill people. There are lots of small hydro projects in Montana and Idaho where the railroads needed to make electricity for the electric locomotives until ventilation was improved in tunnels. I think dams are still going to be needed with changing climate as there will be more drought and more intense rainfall. They will need to contain floods and reserve water through dry periods. But they have to be maintained. There are millions of smaller private or forgotten dams like one on Icicle creek near Leavenworth Washington that can also threaten a popular tourist town. I believe in that case they had to airlift earth moving equipment because there was no longer a road to those dams
Solar and wind need massive storage to be viable as a primary power source. Nuclear is politically tricky (despite honestly being the best overall option) so well designed dams are the best option for clean base load power. As to the argument about fish again well designed dams create ladders for fish to get upstream and they are generally a very effective approach for minimal cost.
Nuclear fission and maybe modular nuclear fission is better, no battery storage issues, works all day long, etc. It's amazing how people think it's so dangerous when there's only been 3 meltdowns over the many years. If people were so concerned about carinogens and radioactivity emissions then they should stop using coal and oil!
@@spicychad55 I agree but given the political landscape for nuclear we still need hydro since enough storage to make 100% solar/wind is not practical (especially in northern climates). I'm in BC and we get 90% of our power from hydro (historically 97%) and have a very good safety record. More dynamic time of day electricity rates to encourage thermal batteries for industries, usage only when available where possible (ie desalination), power packets schemes and devices like EVs to charge opportunistically can help a little but good base load is also needed to minimize intermittency.
@@dianapennepacker6854 Largely due to overregulation which is why china is installing nuclear for 1/3rd the cost. SMR technology is really no different than what has been installed in us navy ships for years and with mass production nuclear can be very safe and effective. 50 year old reactors have still proven mostly safe and lots of advancements have been made in the interim.
@@ccibinel China does a lot of things cheap, and there are websites solely dedicated to the consequences of that. I wouldn't use them as an example for much. Those regulations are in place for a reason. Nuclear should never have short cuts. The issue is we have to privatize everything, and profit for the stake holders is the priority. One promising company is making it so we can convert old fossil fuel plants to nuclear. That sounds like a good plan to me. That is until decent battery storage outside of lithium becomes acceptable, because wind and solar are cheap. They are becoming cheaper by the day, and battery tech is exploding.
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The completion date for the Hover dam is incorrect. It was completed in 1936 not 1993.
I vaguely recall that CaspianReport made a video roughly a year ago from a geopolitical perspective about the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over dams on the Nile built to preserve fresh water. Sadly it has been a ticking bomb waiting to cause a disaster.
We need Dam celebration days. The Dam needs to become a thing we care about
You are right about the engineering of dams, live with cars, it's easy to design a perfect car, but making it and servicing it also needs to be taken into consideration when engineering these more costly structures.
Maybe A I can help out 🙂
(You showed your LARQ bottle in the airport where you mention you fly frequently. The only problem is that TSA will confiscate that bottle before I could blink an eye.)
Funny you should mention 50-60 years ago because that's when I was in Engineering school. We had a course back then where they taught us that projects like those dams didn't end when the construction was finished, but went on with maintenance for the life of the structure. A sinking fund was supposed to be set up that would cover the cost of planned maintenance at the proper intervals. Since those days, it seems that project management has been taken over from engineers in charge by politicians and business-school types who don't seem to care about maintenance.
Yes, our reliance on college educated personnel instead of those who know the ins and outs of practical engineering with actual hands on experience getting their orders from those who have none is absolutely mind boggling
They do. They just don’t have the money. Initiate climate change tax.
That's what happens when you allow politicians to be in charge of things... it usually ends badly.
@@kathyjacques2688 You do know that engineers are college educated, right? It's not something you learn on the job.
@@Pushing_Pixels Yes I do know that, I actually know some engineers, but I was referring to the people who make the executive decisions and control the budget
The Vajont dam in Italy did not fail. It was super strong. During some very heavy rains, the whole side of a mountain fell down into the lake. It made a giant wave. Something like one cubic mile of water hit the dam. It went over the top of the dam and down the canyon into the valley below. The blast of air preceding the water destroyed much before the water even hit. I went to see this in 1968, In front of the dam there is all this dirt and debris. The gates are open and water was still flowing down. There was even talk of cleaning it out and using the dam again, this was never done. The Italian government built a new town for the survivors.
You say potato, I say design failure. Like Ricky said, for infrastructure projects of this size, they should have investigated that possibility and had a contingency plan. It's not like an act of god dropped that water.
That’s an amazing story. Thanks for sharing! 👍
They knew the mountain was unstable, but they went ahead with the project anyway.
@@vinquinn So it isn't technically a damn collapse, but it IS a design failure. Which they are equally responsible for. The wise man built his house upon the rock.
@@curtissyswerda6700the wiser man built his house on a giant surfboard.
We just need to hire the experts, Beavers. They will even cover the maintenance part.
...and protect us from a warming planet!
Back in 05-06 I remember the physics teacher telling us about how most bridges and damns were built in the 30s with a life expectancy of around 70 years and we were already late in fixing or replacing them. Fast-forward over 15 years and we start to see this problems that were avoidable and many people were warning everyone about. Same as so many other problems we are already late to tackle
Yet america has no money for its own economy to repair crumbling infra, to handle homelessness and other issues. But they do have billions to send abroad to shore up facists governments or to bring democracy to countries that do not dance to USA's tunes.
Those damn dams, always confusing people who don't understand the serviceable life of materials like Concrete, Steel, and Clay.
But not to worry, I’m pretty sure that some politician will be promising tax cuts again next year, and people will vote for them, and when the dams fail, everyone will say “how could this happen”?
Boomers and Generation X were the worst generations at a most pivotal time in history.
@@Poppa_Capinyoaz ...You suck at dieing.
Work on that.
I live in the Netherlands. A country in Europe located at the North sea. About 26% of the land is below sea level, and 59% of it is vulnerable in case of storms + high tides. Add to that the yearly local increase of sea level by 3 millimeter, and the fact that parts of the Netherlands are slowly sinking. If disaster strikes, this will disrupt the entire country. A really, really large disaster happened in 1953 when a combination of a winter storm and a higher than normal high tide (moon and sun working together: do not know the english word for this) caused extensive flooding. After this, very large infrastructures started being build to defend us against the sea, and we are still building more than 50 years later.
But great floods where also happening in much earlier times. So it was in everybodies interest to work together to prevent large disasters as good as possible. This is why in 1255 the first "waterschap" was founded, and a lot more were fouded afterwards. Currently we have 6 of them. Responsibility of the "waterschappen" is to protect the land against flooding from mainly rivers, but also against droughts which thanks to climate change is a growing concern. Unique is the fact, that a "waterschap" can collect taxes by themselves to pay for all this. That way, it is cut off from the yearly budget of the nation or province, to avoid budget for maintenance of the critical water infrastructure being cut in favor of other expenses.
Responsibility for defending our country against flooding by the sea lies by "Rijkswaterstaat". This is funded by the governement. but despite our nation being devided into multiple political parties, everybody agrees on the importance of having sufficient, and continous funding to keep the extensive infrastructure in top tier condition, or upgrade them.
thank you, learned something new again!@@mal2ksc
Very inspiring!
I can add to this....The high of the tide/storm in 1953 may be thought to be high.....But thanks to the Delta works (Those very large infra structure you mention) we did not have the same disaster in 1990 ..only 2 years after finishing the most important part of those Delta works.(also in the winter).
The wetter had repeated after 37 years....the tide was only 6 cm lower as in 1953...also storm combines with king tide.. (My source...someone working for the government in Domburg).
That day in 1990 (2 in fact because 2 storms with 14 days interval) ended the discussion if the investment had enough value due to the costs....in those 2 nights the deltaworks had payed themselves in full. In current money the investment would be around 50.000.000.000 dollars/euro's.
You're lucky. We in America have only two parties and they can't even agree on the need for oxygen - or whether we should have borders. We just spent $1.2 trillion on an "Infrastructure" bill, which included almost no new spending on infrastructure beyond new green energy & Internet, and nothing significant for dam repair/replacement.
The term is a Spring tide, the low pressure storm caused the north sea to push water throught the Dover straights, both the UK and Netherlands suffered badly in that storm surge. I did my geography dissertation on it and visited many sites to visulise the damage and distruction. The new spillways and barriers designed by the Dutch should give generations of protection.
I was born in Sanford, Michigan. When the Edenville dam gave out the beautiful Sanford lake (and others) drained away and disappeared.
The flooding was devastating for all structures in the area.
Every year for the decade prior, maintenance was continually put off to save the company $.
They were given a small fine each time... but never fixed.
They should have taken the hint and rewilded the river. By building those dams back, the same thing will happen in the future when no one wants to pay for them.
My home was washed away in a flood in Mid Michigan in 2020 (and u thought your 2020 was bad). A dam failed and all the water rushed downstream failing 2 or 3 more dams until all the water burst out into the Great Lakes. This will become more and more common as we ignore crumbling infrastructure.
You bet. They’re too busy pocketing the monies
There is a solution that could be implemented with use of ultra high performance concrete (UHPC). Use of that material can make repair easier, faster, lighter, stronger, and lifecycle would be 125 years or more. Applies to bridges too. Don't tear down and replace, instead repair. Even rock and earth dams could be more easily repaired with UHPC. Look at Steelike UHPC and find out what they just accomplish on a bridge in Oregon. Same material enabled responsible engineering that is more environmentally friendly than conventional concrete.. In fact, why not do a program on UHPC and it's uses. Europe is on board with using the material because it is stronger than conventional concrete, water proof, chloride proof, and easy to put in place. Great review and assessment of the status of dams in the world and U.S., and U S. Inability to consider lifecycle cost and act.
It also depends heavily on the region and type of dam. Hydroelectric dams receive continuous maintenance for obvious reasons, and in the mountain states dams are uncommon, and very important due to lack of rain, so they receive far more attention
The Earth is in a polar excurssion. And much more. It doesn't matter. It's going going, gone, soon!! Anyway. That's why our major players in our gov. doesn't do much except to distract us,,, distraction are many and usually ridiculous.
Everything is being rebuilt here it's a pretty big undertaking with 4 dams needing to be rebuilt along with causeway and constant clearing the lake beds of foliage so they can be refilled. Looking like it will be 6 years without a lake total before we get it back. It's just a small town and much revenue depens on that lake so I'm thankful it will come back although like I said... 6 years without.
Hi from the UK, I work for a water company and my job is inspecting earth embankment dams! We have carried out risk assessments on all of ours and came to the conclusion that they all get inspected 3x a week, this involves both the upstream and downstream faces and the mitres where the face meets the sides, we also check drainage points weekly and carry out inspections on the safety valves and shafts and tunnels monthly. Not had one fail yet!🤞🏼😂
the big question is: does climate change put more pressure on these dams.
those crossed fingers made me laugh out loud... I had high hopes till i saw the crossed fingers😂
@@autohmaeHow would it do that?
@@autohmae yes, it can do. Last year was very dry in the UK and we had very low water levels, this can lead to earth shrinkage and in extreme instances could compromise the clay core. This is monitored very closely. Previous years we had a very wet summer (2007 was the worse) due to that we had to remodel and increase the overflow capacity of the spillways so they could transfer the water away from the dam and downstream safely.
@@peterjackson2722 it’s good that nothing has happened yet but as a former safety engineer in the power industry not having a failure yet is not evidence of safe facilities. 😂😂
I listened to someone on the radio the other day on CBC Vancouver who was Indigenous but also had some serious back ground in water management and her message was that eventually water will always win the battle. Trying to control it becomes increasingly complicated and failure is the result. I believe that this is true of all of our manmade systems. The best example is your own houses. We put a lot of effort into creating a perfect living situation and then spend the rest of our lives repairing or replacing stuff. Simplicity is the key.
Obviously nothing lasts forever, especially when dealing with the immense pressures of a dam and the corrosive nature of water. That does not mean we are to simply give up. We built cities and infrastructure to conquer nature because nature is relentlessly trying to kill everything. We can always replace broken or aging things. Maybe one day we will have access to new power sources and we won't need dams anymore, but that time isn't now.
Man you need to see the damage occurring in Alberta, Canada. We have thousands of orphaned petroleum wells and facilities, leaking into the environment. No one owns them, the companies disappeared and gave them to the citizens. It will be an amazing video I'd like to watch
The book Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner has some fascinating stuff about the glut of dam building that occurred in the past and the lack of necessary maintenance on that infrastructure that has occurred since then. More problems in that area than money can solve.
There are older dams that were built in the 19th century that are safe because they were overengineered and build to last. It's cheap dams that risk structural failure. Dams on upper catchment areas of rivers are less of an ecological issue than ones build across rivers, but they can be mitigated with fish ladders.
If dams are no longer in use they needen't be destroyed, just don't fill them, and make a water channel for fish to pass. Keeping empty dams in place can be useful to hold back storm surges from overwhelming places downriver.
Why do we need to stop flooding in the first place, I remember seeing a project in Europe where they claimed certain ecosystems expect to be flooded almost on a yearly basis to function properly. Something about restoring old swaps, because their ecosystems are important/diverse.
Aside from that I understand that if you ve build cities in old swamp regions you no longer want or can have floods, but why build on naturally flooded areas in the first place
@@BankruptGreek Didn't know there were ecosystems being dependent on floods. That does make sense on second thought though. Yeah building in swamp areas...I guess they're just swamp people lol
@@dann5740 where politicians come from
I would guess there is a very small % of 19th century dams still around & they are probably small....they just don't last that long no matter how well built.
@R.-."*...The word "Safe" only exists in our imaginations as a verb. You can own a "safe" in noun form.
With all the bad actors popping up around the world these days, all Dams are Force Multipliers.
An explosive device that could destroy a dam would only cause minor damage if set off somewhere else.
I lived on a river once. I rented.
The major dam builders and owner/operators of dams in the US are CoE, BuRec, CalWaterBoard, and TVA. I have noticed that when dams are proposed the 3 big items are: power, flood control, and recreation. The first 2 are mutually exclusive--for power the lake needs to be high and for flood control the lake needs to be low. Unwanton building in flood plains creates many problems because of large investment, covering the ground with roofs and paving of roads and parking lots that do not let water percolate into the ground but hurriedly run off adding to flood problems. Levees raise flood water so when it does breech the water damage is greater than if it came up, spilled out on the flood plain, then receeded.
Power generation and flood mitigation can coexist, but you have to design for it upfront and be willing to pay for a bigger dam (and have favourable geography).
At 5:47, I believe the Hoover Dam was completed in 1936, not 1993.
this is 100% correct. I also noticed that error.
Also apparently South America had no dams. Just 16.4% of the world's dams in the old world are just from US, Mexico, and Canada.
I guess they don't have any good waterways to use...
Historically where I used to live in Devon UK there were about 30 smaller dams in a small river just 10 miles long each one with a leat and wall, powering workshops, forges, grain milling etc for about 800 years. These were sustainable and designed to be cleaned out every 10 years or so by opening a low sluice gate and allowing the collected mud to flow down the river, thereby giving some of the irrigated fields a top up and cleaning out the dam holding lake. Our mega-dams are wonderful on paper, and offer considerable power storage and stability to our grid systems, but all too often they do not include long term maintenance facilities. Draining the refilling periodically is one good idea which allows all sorts of maintenance. I think with large dams its too easy to become complacent, because they appear to be stable, like natural lakes, whereas in fact they store a great amount of potential energy. Great clip by the way.
The dams in Libya did not store water. They were meant to check flash floods and hold sediment during rare rain events in that arid region. The flood that wiped out Derma would have been catastrophic anyway, the failure of these flood control structures made it worse.
Dams should not be designed to hold a certain amount of water, they should be designed
to hold water far above the brim, with at least 10 m to spare above it.
Why ? Well, if they are put in series, and one breaks, the rush of water needs that much
clearance to go over the second and third and such or you risk cascade collapse.
If you think a dam breaking is bad, wait till you see a cascade collapse.
Also dams shouldn't be constructed much higher than water level that they are supposed to hold.
It's better they overflow when filled over capacity, than breaking due to being pressured over it's design specs.
A few years ago when Nashville flooded (2010), we found out about Wolf Creek dam in Kentucky was weak and it is being repaired, but it took several years of pouring concrete INSIDE the already existing dam. I believe it is a combination of earth and concrete, but I have not gone to review it myself. Yes, dams can be dangerous, but they also are helpful. Not all are bad or good, and need to be reviewed individually.
One point I really like about your videos is that the visual footage is relevant and matches the narrative. Has become a rare feat on TH-cam.
This is one of those videos that when you watch it, you can’t help but say “dam!”
Man. Y’all forget where uncle manny came from. He was from extreme poverty in the Philippines. To put things into perspective. He was so poor there wasn’t enough money for a pair of shoes until he was 12 years old. He went from 108 lbs to 154 lbs because once he started winning he had FOOD.
Lake mead should be drained in favor of more efficient dams in Utah and Colorado as well as cisterns in Nevada, Arizona, and California. 1 million acre feet of evaporation is too much water for the southwest to "spend" on a reservoir.
I'm currently in Ladakh, there was a glacial lake blowout a couple days ago which took out a dam and killed over a hundred people, triggered by a rain bomb which are becoming more common in the region.
The authorities were told ten years ago that this was in danger of happening, but did nothing.
There are dozens if not hundreds of glacial lakes at worse levels of threat all throughout the region, and nothing is being done about any of them.
That's cute.
You have weaponized weather by calling a "wet microburst," a "rain bomb."
LowTech, I would curtail your use of using four letter words to describe complex systems, for humanity's sake.
The "bomb" in this case was a dam, built by Humans.
Mother Nature was simply doing her thing, while Politicians lived in their tiny little Bubble, on high ground.
I live downstream from kinzua dam, in Pa. It is said, that if it fails, it would cause devastation all the way to the gulf of Mexico. It has been marked as a major target if there were a war. It is an earthen fill and concrete dam, built on a known minor geologic fault. Do I worry? Yes
Love the fact that you just brush over the Oceania dams like they are an insignificant amount, even though its more than the combined total of Europe and Africa (which you feel are relevant enough to highlight).
it is estimated 90% of dams in the US are under 10 ft tall and not even registered. Many dams in Oceania are also smaller. so while they are large in # they less massive.
There are dams, dams and damns. It’s the last one we don’t want!
Correction: engineers don’t cut corners - their managers order them to cut corners…been there…
We need to rewild more wetlands & reintroduce beavers in correct areas. We need to free up natural waterways to improve salmon runs, nutrient flow to inland areas & estuaries biodiversity. *If we use modern advanced nuclear energy options we wouldn't need to dam all our rivers & messing up all our natural waterways. We can engineer natural water overflow areas to utilize and not waste any influx of fresh water we get from rain storms, etc. If we just keep functioning how we have been, we will continue to see freshwater systems going in the wrong direction, declining biodiversity and water/soil quality.. the list goes on. We really should enhance our society into a new era of living & finding ways to help our surroundings flourish because the more the environment around us flourishes, the more we flourish. It's a win win if we approch things right.
One very important thing you failed to mention was the 1959 Egypt Sudan Nile river water allocation agreement both countries signed, the major issue is that agreement excluded Ethiopia in the negotiations but Egypt expected Ethiopia to abide by that agreement, that is why Ethiopia went ahead with the construction of the dam. That agreement didn't include Ethiopia. Another thing never mentioned in this video is that Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world, only 33% of the population has access to on-grid electricity and that dam will provide a massive boost to that number. Ethiopia needs that electricity the dam will generate, they need it to fight poverty for a start, it is almost impossible to run a business without a reliable power source and all the other things having a reliable power supply provides. And to generate electricity water has to be released, there is no other way to generate it so saying Ethiopia can withhold releasing the water for months is disingenuous
no they can for the next few years. and then if flow is managed properly, the could close the dam for a few months at a time. but there is sill the White Nile.
The dam in central Michigan failed because Michigan refused to allow the to relieve the damn as he had been doing for years at that time of year. When you leave the water in an Earthen Dam structure like that for that long yes it liquefies the soil. Which is why the standard was was to not allow the damn to get anywhere near the amount that people thought it could hold. Another issue it had was that it had electrification capability that the state refused to let him use or even allowed the owners to allow the spillways of the electrification portion to reduce the pressure on the damn. The state required him to hold back the water until it failed like they knew it would and then blame the owners. And that is a matter of record. He had been telling them for some time that this was going to fail and they refuse to allow them to relieve the pressure.
extreme weather events are not becoming worse and more frequent, they are just reported on more and hyped more for justification that global warming, cooling, change is happening.
Exactly.climate change has another name,weather!!!
We humans just dont live long enough to notice the natural cycles.
@@matthewgoodchild6763 oh they notice, if its hot outside, its global warming, if its cold outside, its global cooling, and in between when its something like 70 to 80, it's climate change.
The problem with the power grid is not adding additional lines to handle the additional load do US population has doubled since the transmission lines were originally built and not enough I’ve been added, you can only shove so much power down 1 Wire
The number of dams close to failure really shocked me
Love your comments about maintenance, as it needs to be build into the design (be it a dam, building, machine) - I am have a tehcnical background and work with Engineers and usually the design is good, but maintenance and logistic support are not understood. What is the maintenance process through to who is responsible even during the build phase (all the stock purchased - is it stored and maintained correctly). It could be a battery buried in the design eg: smoke alarm, processing card that is used in monitoring. Sometimes the battery is already expired or the processing card is no longer available and we need extra spares for the life of the project. I might be biased, but have a clear set of requirements up front including maintenance combined with good technical input have made the whole design to implemenation a abosolute joy and any issues where relativetly easy to solve. Thank you
It's understood. Lol. Just some middle-manager thinks they can cut costs or speed up things.
The idea of Dams is great but the reality of them are aweful. Sure its clean energy but at what cost? Honestly i wish this country would get over its fear of Nuclear energy because it has gotten alot safer over the years and with even more put into the development of that technology we could make it safe enough to use in cars one day. Imagine having a car that you almost never have to refill with fuel you could drive for years without ever having to have the fuel replaced.
Should have detailed the Oroville dam disaster. That was nearly a massive life threatening failure and had some nice engineering feats to preserve the dam.
In the end, though, because of the geology, the dam will fail again in the future. They just built it in a bad location and it will never stop eroding. The best they can do is mitigate damage over the decades. Or stop using it.
@@plektosgaming the dam did not fail, the spill way did . True the failure did put the dam in risk of failure but the spill way has since been reconstructed.
@@dwainsellers6453 This is why I thought it deserved some attention. The reconstruction of the spillway with recognition that the underlying geology was at risk, the re-engineering was magnificent!
@@dwainsellers6453 The spillway is part of the dam's overall design, is it not? Maintaining it properly is also part of the overall upkeep as well. Design defects as well as poor upkeep were found, in addition to the overall stability of the design being... questionable. That is, any overflow that the spillways can not contain will cause large scale erosion down to the bedrock. They still built it, causing a threat that will always be there every time a major storm hits. And it gets even better as research afterwards pointed to the department in charge cutting costs, hiring a recent student with only 2 years on other projects to design the spillways, (to save money over experienced experts), and waiving their hands at safety concerns, considering cracks in the cement to be "normal" during inspections. Typical politics and cost-cutting.
So.. they "rebuilt it. The new spillways are indeed better, but the issue still looms as it is built on very poor rock. So we will always be throwing money at fixing it and maintaining it. Or in the State of California's game plan, build it and forget it until something happens.
We must also remember that modern dams were made with concrete with an average life that can vary from 50 to 100 years.
(not the Roman cement which improves with age and which we can admire after 2000 years)
With the older and larger dams in Europe and the US we are very close to that limit. By also adding "limited" maintenance, the risk of catastrophic failure increases every day.
Leave it to the guy who's name ends in vowels to pat Romans on the back.
Your ancestors were probably their slaves, but you prefer geo-history over reality.
Show me a Roman structure that resists the same pressures as a medium sized dam.
What you see left over from Romans are decrepit houses of murder, a leaning tower, and some elevated water pipes.
Wow.
I think that, if dams are to be built, there should be wind-powered pumps and stairways with levies, to let fish travel upstream by jumping from one small reservoir to the next until they get above the top of the dam, then do the same thing to get down on the other side, a small windmill pumping water to keep the stairway filled all the time, excess water going form one such reservoir to the next one downstream. Also, they should be built such that a second dam can be built downstream (ideally) or upstream (if not possible/feasible otherwise)to allow for the first one to be removed later on, for safety reasons. And they should also be overengineered, and overmaintained, to make sure that nothing breaks. Sure, that would require more money allocated for building and maintaining them, but it's better to be more prepared than less prepared.
Could you provide a citation or two explaining how, and by how much, dams affect the Earth's rotation? TYVM !
I'd like to hear about that too. When ya think about it in physics terms, "an object in motion tends to remain in motion until a force acts to change it". Stopping billions of cubic meters of flowing water has to have an effect on Earth itself, in that; a) we've effectively put the brakes on the flow of those same volumes and b) the sheer mass (I'd think) reallocated to different geo-locations (other than as Mother Nature has created) has to throw off the equalizing/stabilizing force of *flowing* water. I'd guess that is a part of the explanation of increasing motility of the North / South poles. (Procession has been increasing both in magnitude and rate of change for decades.)
I wonder if another part of the explanation of what is termed to be global warming is as a result of other *cumulative ancillary factors* such as shooting billion pound payloads out of earth's atmosphere? Near the 49th parallel and I'm seeing a certain cyclical trend in weather patterns that tend to swing above average for about two weeks, then below average for about the next two weeks. I've been seeing this trend for years.
I lien Earth's spin to that of a galactic spinning top. If one placed an *out of balance weight* on any spot of the top, the top would no longer spin (apparently) motionless but wobble on it's spinning axis.
Right or wrong?
Brilliant discussion, as always, Ricky. I believe that the mega-project dams (and pubic works in general) are going to give way to smaller more incremental solutions. We don't NEED Hoover Dam to generate electricity; a series of much smaller spillway dams powering smaller generators would do the same thing. Just as we went through the super-computer phase before arriving at cellphones and tablets; I believe the aging mega projects will follow the same development curve. We will arrive at micro-hydro (there are generators available on Amazon!). Instead of huge, impressive feats of engineering, we will move to much more clever, cheaper, and more eco-friendly distributed solutions.
It’s more difficult for govt officials to skim off the top with smaller projects, though. One aspect of the “military industrial complex”. are large engineering firms like Bechtel that take US tax dollars for large international projects that hinder more than help the locals but enrich the corrupt “leaders” of that nation and ours.
@@NikoricciEXACTLY 💥
@@Nikoricci Sadly, true. Yet another reason to favour small local projects. At least the money stays in the local economy!
Let's crowdfund it. No government involved!
@@ipp_tutor Excellent for building a new project - a lot harder to pull off to maintain said infrastructure. Worth a try, though!
Québec has a number of very large dams and relies almost entirely on those dams for power. They are very closely watched as failures of those dams would cripple the province. Electricity is our main source of heating. We came really close to a worse case scenario in 1998 and know all too well just how much we rely on electricity.
There's a state in Australia (Tasmania) that runs entirely on hydropower. They have several dams, that also supply drinking water. Losing one would be a very big deal.
Tasmania 68,401 km2----- Quebec 1,365,128.44 km2 !@@Pushing_Pixels
we van afford to replace ALL the dams and electrical infrastructures ..we have to want to do it.
Your comment about not budgeting for operational maintenance or decommissioning infrastructure is so true and so worrying. And the classic problem around the world is the decommissioning & removal of nuclear power stations. And yet we keep building more when we haven’t even got plans in place to safely store waste from nuclear plants and nuclear submarines that are no longer in service and which are costing 10’s of millions to just keep safe. And yet successive Governments just keep kicking the ball down the line.
The maintenance issue is much bigger than you think. It is not just mega projects that we need money for maintenance. Many towns and cities are not able to do proper maintenance on their infrastructure - sewers, potable water, and roads. We are in an unsustainable situation for the future.
Hard men make good times. Good times make soft men. Soft men make hard times. We are headed for hard times.
Infrastructure is vital and necessary. It’s expensive and it needs to be maintained. That’s a fundamental function of government. Teaching kids about gender ideology is not a function of government. We need to get our priorities straightened out.
I work in Emergency Management and the major thing that keeps me up at night is lack of infrastructure maintenance.
Removing dams is certainly expensive. Where I live, there's a $130 million project to remove a dam built 110 years ago that used to be used for hydroelectric power. This dam is only 428ft wide and 58ft tall. There is also an environmental aspect to dam removal. This project will ruin 30 acres of a park to bury what is considered contaminated sediments.
I think you should do a video on how our dams have changed the rotation of the earth. 16:49
Yeah, you mentioned this and kept going - I was very intrigued!
@@KaitlyntheGardenerNice point.
Has to occur, as would, in theory, filling a bathtub with water. Simply a matter of degree.
it is because of the immense mass of the water being held at higher elevation. kind of like putting your arms out when you spin. the variance is in milliseconds.
I studied your water bill! 14:48 It's no wonder California is running out of water. I pay $250 Canadian for 11,000 liters of water (about 400 cubic feet). That lasts me 4-6 weeks. I collect rain water for the garden, and if it's a dry summer, my lawn looks bad. I know it's apples to oranges because you're in a desert so rain water not really an option, but 15-20 times more?
He is in San Diego, that's not the desert. He is south of the Antelope Valley mountains. Part of my life, I grew up in the desert, North of the Antelope Valley mountains in the Mojave desert.
$250 is a good salary in Egypt
Out of the 8 years (1984-1992) I lived in the desert. I saw enough rainfall one time and only one time, that actually turned the desert into a thriving green landscape. That was in 1992. It was the only time I witnessed the beauty of the desert.
@@Istandby666 I've seen desert blooming in documentaries only. Bet it was a great sight!
That's actually pretty standard pricing for a water bill. The volume used is insane though, and that's where the penalty rates kick in and make such a high total.
So the bill is for 2 months, for 58k hcf. Meaning they used something like 43,384 gallons over a 2 month span.
By comparison, my water district in western Pa charges $120 per quarter ($80 for a 2 month period) for a 3/4" meter and $5.26 per thousand gallons ($3.93 per hcf). So an equivalent volume here would be around $310 ($322 with the fire meter charge) for a 2 month period.
Your data for the largest dam capacity by output has omitted Grand Coulee Dam so Ethiopia would be 5th on your list.
The uTuber's data set is spot on for the channel name.
Don't bother a hack while they use decimal places on their spread sheets for Human Deaths or mix words like "hoarding" and "storing" water when Egypt and Ethiopia are concerned.
Excellent video! I had no idea there were so many dams around the world! Thank you for covering this topic.
Try getting a politician on board with selling maintenance programmes along with infrastructure projects... Good luck with that! People are remarkably short sighted when it comes to spending money. Especially when it's not their life on the line.
My take to all constructions are to make a full lifecycle assessment, including risk, maintenance, emergency and deconstruction. A yes, if all points checks out ok.
Oroville Dam spillway was a huge failure ..
Look at the Oroville Dam. Huge spillway failure and its an earthen structure. As a kid i remember watching it being built. Klamath River. You miss pronounce Klamath think of it like a clam and meth. Clam-ith.
1:16 They can 'upgrade' structural integrity of each dam at risk by adding metal bracing outside
in honeycomb configuration braced both from the sides as well as the ground.
Since these are metal only braces, they can be applied quite quickly and at a low cost,
if they have an engineer that can calculate and foresee the expansion coefficients
of metal during both hot and cold and also apply a cooling/heating or possibly pressure system
to account for both shrinkage and expansion of metal during temperature differences.
The pressure system would be worthwhile, since it can be done on the fly, while
using the dam's own pressure as a workforce. I'd estimate a few million $ per dam.
You have for got to mention the Gardner Dam in Saskatchewan which is 2 miles wide at it's widest and 175 miles long. Ones of the largest earth filled dams in the world completed in 1967. The also fills three lakes Buffalo Pound, Black Strap and Qu'apple.
Very sobering update on dams - thanks
It's cold, raining and here comes Mr. Sunshine.
Exactly. Stop kicking the can. All future maintenance needs to be in scope and budget.
There are at least 7 reasons that dams are used for, some are extremely important:
Water storage for use year round - a reservoir.
Flood control - This reason may be so important that an old dam can't be removed - downstream would be flooded by a heavy rain.
Hydroelectric power generation - can be very important.
Irrigation - most water is used for growing crops.
Navigation - makes the river navigable by ships.
Recreation - watersports.
Fishing - guys just like to brag about the fish they caught.
So dams are often so important for so many reasons that it's foolish for humans to allow them to become unsafe due to lack of maintenance. Don't allow our infrastructure to decay and as Ricky said, "be covered in bird poop."
Building new dams as electric battery storage makes sence such as the new Coire Glas project in Scotland to store excess energy from wind turbines. there are a lot of hydro schemes in Scotland and as far as I know they have a good safety record and many have fish ladders or passes allowing the salmon to continue upstream, this however costs more.
It always amazes me how simple principles such as “lifetime ownership costs” apply to so many things yet are seemingly overlooked like you alluded to with the car ownership analogy. I think as humans we just have a hard time grasping the costs required to PREVENT disaster and categorize that as wasteful. Instead, we prefer to see the disaster being repaired no matter what the cost- as long as we are not affected, of course. Great video. 👍
I'm living in New England and when I came here in the late 70's, a bunch of privates dams were failing. When the people who built them were done, they walked away and the Government was fine. Big or little
I live down stream from the Edenville Dam. I'm about 6 city blocks from the river in Saginaw. My cousin and his family live right on the river in Midland and had to borrow my boat to get things out of his house. It was pretty crazy! But this river system down stream use to flood almost that bad every couple years. My cousin just finished repairing his house from another flood a week before the dam broke.
Normally, though, people would settle well above where it floods. The reality is any place built in a flood plain is on borrowed time. Be it 2 years or 200 years from now, it will eventually be under water again. They do plan to rebuild it, but trust me, it'll be built to a price, use overseas steel, and more... I'd honestly plan to move to higher ground as soon as is practical if you plan to be there longer than another decade or so. My own relatives in Missouri finally, after 60+ years on the same farms, moved to higher ground above the floods. And never looked back. Because like clockwork, every 15-20 years, the place would flood. They still own the land, but the houses are long gone. - just some sheds for equipment.
Very timely post. It made my recollect the earthen dam abive my city that partially let go due to abive average monsoonal rains 6 years ago
Power lines... Phone lines carry very little power
It is far too simplistic to say that earthen dams are more dangerous than concrete dams. It is a matter of many issues such as site conditions, design, construction, and maintenance. I work on hundreds of dams close to 100 years old or older. Maintenance is key, but the value of the power generated is not worth much today. The value of water management and real-estate is where money for upkeep and maintenance must come from. Unfortunately, this requires government regulations and control. All of our aging infrastructure are ticking time bombs.
Good point about the real estate. In May of 2019, we had historic rain and flooding in tulsa. The Keystone Dam at keystone Lake is along the Arkansas River, which flows east into Tulsa before turning south close to our downtown area. They were releasing water as fast as they could from the dam due to rising levels, but holding back as much as they could at the same time due to flooding of the river. River and lake levels got WAY higher than I have ever seen them. Growing up on the lake, we backed up to core. I called my dad and he said the lake was almost in his back yard. From what I understand, core owns the max flood plain area around the lake, which means the lake was pretty well maxed out. He wasn't concerned, because if water got much higher, it was going over the dam.
They were playing a delicate game. Either water was going to breach the top of the dam, potential dam failure which they were monitoring 24 hrs, or they were going to have to flood properties downstream. Ultimately, they had to flood properties and towns downstream, south of tulsa.
I live right near downtown, maybe a mile or less north of the river before it turns south. I am on much higher ground, but people south of me in the low lying areas were evacuated. There are levees along the river where it runs east, and there was massive concern the earth formed levees would fail due to lack of maintenance over they years. They had military trucks and personnel patrolling the length of the levees.
I don't think any of them failed, at least on the north side. However, a lot of property was flooded in low lying areas on the south side of the river, and downstream, south of tulsa.
I have no idea how much power that dam even generates, but it can't be much in the scheme of things, as most of our power is via nat gas and coal, However, the floods easily cost millions in property damage. If the dam were to have failed, it would have been catastrophic. I couldn't tell you how bad it would be if there were never a dam there, as I would imagine the city layout would be much different. I imagine the river would have gotten much higher with even more unregulated flow into from the rivers upstream. Assuming the same city layout, I imagine the ability to somewhat control the river levels is what saved most of tulsa. On the flip side, a dam failure releasing that much backed up water, pressure, and energy would cause significantly more damage than an unregulated river.
As per usual, excellent presentation, Ricky D. Only, you missed a huge factoid in the maintenance of dams: that these cause huge soil deposition upstream of the dam. This is because when water slows, the suspension of particles is solution drops out and desposition forms. So, in time, this dammed area fills in with sediment which eventually has to be removed or risk damaging the structure entirely.
this is part of the reason for the Elway dam removals the reservoirs were over 90% sedimented
FWIW, you REALLY need to keep your units off measure consistent.
At about 8:45, you start with cubic meters, then switch to acre-feet, and later switch back to cubic meters. Needless to say, acre-feet are orders of magnitude larger than cubic meters and it is easy to get confused since you switch back and forth when making comparisons...
I hope you'll try to be more consistent in the future.
Visited the Teton Dam weeks after it failed, was surreal at the overlook with a idealic display panel showing all the benefits and then looking down in the canyon this (couple hundred ft high?) earth damn was half missing. Washed out upon 1st fill and destroyed small town miles away.
Latest major dam disaster occurred this week. Chungthang Dam, India. Apparently their 2nd largest hydroelectric dam. Collapsed due to glacial lake outburst. Numerous known fatalities but at this time, too early to assess number of dead and missing.
About 40 people dead.
I live near an earthen made dam. Oroville, Ca. Lake Oroville was in the news in 2017 when the spillway was coming apart.
Scare tactics don't help anyone.
Dams require constant maintenance that, if neglected, make them a danger or Safety Risk.
In corrupt countries and also in America where many of the structures have been privatised, this maintenance is often not done because it's not seen as profitable.
Corruption induced lack of maintenance is the biggest threat to Dam Safety.
SMR mass production anyone? I am reliably informed that it can only take months, (PM Kev said), not years or decades to manufacture upgrades to the "walk away safe" technology.
Our favorite travel essential! 🌎
Wait. so there are no dams in South America?
That confused me too, but there are actually a lot of dams in south america. A quick search says 1922 reported. However, divided by the 575,000 total dams he stated, it is only .3%, so maybe it wasn't worth mentioning.
I live a block away from the Suwannee River, which I've heard is the longest undammed river in the US (though Canada's undammed Yukon River makes that statistic kinda lame). We have a lot of folk paddling the river, enjoying its slow flow from the Okefenokee Swamp (our biggest swamp?).
There are hundreds of smaller dams in the US that are privately owned and very rarely get inspected and don't have proper maintenance done. Some are as small as creating a lake for a specific neighborhood which are generally earthen dams. Often there are people that live literally feet away from these dams downstream, and if they failed the chances of loss of life are very high. We need to be more careful as to where dams are built, and who is responsible for repairs when the owner can't or refuses to. As in most things, there needs to be a more robust regulatory structure in place that is lacking now.
Loving your content, passion man....
X
Water is life. We need to stop building dams to hold back water and start building dams to hold back floods. I have 72 acres and get 41 inches of rain per year. I placed 4acres into ponds as high on the hillside as I could and use the water for irrigation. as for the rain, most of it comes at one half to one-inch intervals that are completely absorbed by the ground. once a year we get 6 to 10 inches in an hour that fills my upper 3-acre pond if it is four feet low and it usually is. The big dams near me (Denton NC) at the times of floods have massive amounts of water going over the spillways. They can't handle it and only use about 10% of the runoff for electricity where if they captured the floods, they could be getting 100% (my opinion and observation, no hard data).
Tax the rich, build infrastructure for the rest of us
Hearing this is such a... dam shame!
I've worried about dam failure since 1997 when I lived in a town next to one built on a fault line. Twice I felt earthquakes from a neighboring State which fortunately is a different fault. While the State Park and Dept of Engineering have made numerous smaller levies and the dam releases water fairly often I still can't believe an apartment complex was built directly below or in line of the flow should it breach. There are a a dozen buildings and 2 exits, both low ground.
Telephone lines don’t start fires. Power lines do that. I can’t believe you said that!
Not to mention it seemed he was alluding to Maui and I'm pretty sure we found out that the lines weren't even electrified at that time.
Wixom lake and the edenville dam and the sandford family (dam was overtopped when Wixom drained) are not far from me. I had used both lakes and now they are gone. The dams are being rebuilt, but the destruction was real. It's been years and things are still. It back to normal... and they never will.
Dams are great and helpful things. When they fail you get to witness mother nature's pent up fury.
Look at the Colorado River dams and how drought is affecting the flows.
Da Vinci Investigative Reporting! I love it!
Brazil is one of the champions in renewable energy because we have hydroelectric power, India and many African countries solved their agriculture crisis by building many small dams using simple tools to store water. We can't really live without dams, if anything, as we push for renewable energy, they will become more common.
Quick thoughts. Earth dams as a type are not deficient. Functional deficiencies are to do with poor engineering, inadequate supervision during construction; contractor's failings and lack of maintenance in use. I live in South Wales, UK. High rainfall and large catchment areas have provided many man-made reservoirs. The UK's highest dam is an embankment dam at Llyn Brianne, which turned fifty years old this year and is still providing water for Swansea. The dam was designed by Alastair Binnie, expert engineers in dam construction all over the world. I am biased, but to me there is something particularly special about a well engineered civil engineering structure that does its job well and sits perfectly in the landscape, which Brianne does
Earthen dams are indeed deficient. As such, they require constant upkeep to keep nature from reclaiming them. This can be done, of course. The one you mention in the U.K. is a good example. But most governments put things like this about last place in their budget, along with things like replacing sewers.
Governments and utility companies might baulk at dam maintenance costs, but the cost of cleaning up a dam failure, and the liabilities that come with it, will be much more expensive.
Trillians and Trillions of dollars later: Nothing BUILD. Nothing is BACK to the way it was, and nothing is BETTER. But are kids now know men can be women
10:50 so you are telling me there are none in South America? What?!
And Oceania contains 17.2% of all dams in the world?!
20 years ago I sat next to a guy on a plane. He was an engineer and said that many dams were past their design life.
Lucky you, he could have been Boeing engineer, telling you that the plane you were on was brand new 737-8.
The US built a lot of infrastructure in the past, but in the last 40 years one political party has had a mantra of reducing taxes to a minimal level and still complaining about how high they are, so governments defer maintenance sometimes until it is too late. On the Columbia River where I live there are 13 dams that produce electricity, control floods and provide irrigation that turn eastern Washington from a desert to an agricultural powerhouse. They also make the water navigable for barges and other boats and on the Snake River they are talking about removing four dams on the lower river that give Idaho a way to cheaply ship grain to markets that wouldn’t be possible by train or trucks. A lot of the impetus for removing the four dams is to allow Salmon to return higher up river, but I believe warming has already made those waters too warm for Salmon to live there and removing the dams would mean power would need to be generated by coal instead of hydro until more renewable power could be put in place.
Happily a lot of new hydro projects don’t need to impound water like they did in the past because turbines can be much smaller and more efficient, so water can come out of a river, run through the turbine and return downstream like the Woods Creek project near my house. There is another one like that from over 100 years ago at Snoqualmie Falls where the power was originally needed to move electric trains over the mountain grades and through tunnels that are miles long that with steam and diesel would kill people. There are lots of small hydro projects in Montana and Idaho where the railroads needed to make electricity for the electric locomotives until ventilation was improved in tunnels.
I think dams are still going to be needed with changing climate as there will be more drought and more intense rainfall. They will need to contain floods and reserve water through dry periods. But they have to be maintained.
There are millions of smaller private or forgotten dams like one on Icicle creek near Leavenworth Washington that can also threaten a popular tourist town. I believe in that case they had to airlift earth moving equipment because there was no longer a road to those dams
Nuclear power is in an analogous situation. There are installations all over the world, including in war zones and geologically unstable areas.
Thank you for sharing your information.
Great content.
all the major infrastructure is crumbling and it costs too much to fix it, we're living on gifts from past generations.
Solar and wind need massive storage to be viable as a primary power source. Nuclear is politically tricky (despite honestly being the best overall option) so well designed dams are the best option for clean base load power. As to the argument about fish again well designed dams create ladders for fish to get upstream and they are generally a very effective approach for minimal cost.
Nuclear fission and maybe modular nuclear fission is better, no battery storage issues, works all day long, etc. It's amazing how people think it's so dangerous when there's only been 3 meltdowns over the many years. If people were so concerned about carinogens and radioactivity emissions then they should stop using coal and oil!
@@spicychad55 I agree but given the political landscape for nuclear we still need hydro since enough storage to make 100% solar/wind is not practical (especially in northern climates). I'm in BC and we get 90% of our power from hydro (historically 97%) and have a very good safety record. More dynamic time of day electricity rates to encourage thermal batteries for industries, usage only when available where possible (ie desalination), power packets schemes and devices like EVs to charge opportunistically can help a little but good base load is also needed to minimize intermittency.
The problem with nuclear is the upfront cost.
@@dianapennepacker6854 Largely due to overregulation which is why china is installing nuclear for 1/3rd the cost. SMR technology is really no different than what has been installed in us navy ships for years and with mass production nuclear can be very safe and effective. 50 year old reactors have still proven mostly safe and lots of advancements have been made in the interim.
@@ccibinel China does a lot of things cheap, and there are websites solely dedicated to the consequences of that. I wouldn't use them as an example for much.
Those regulations are in place for a reason. Nuclear should never have short cuts. The issue is we have to privatize everything, and profit for the stake holders is the priority.
One promising company is making it so we can convert old fossil fuel plants to nuclear. That sounds like a good plan to me.
That is until decent battery storage outside of lithium becomes acceptable, because wind and solar are cheap. They are becoming cheaper by the day, and battery tech is exploding.