{"id":24431,"date":"2015-07-09T06:00:24","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=24431"},"modified":"2015-07-30T11:27:21","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T16:27:21","slug":"record-rainfall-magnifies-problems-for-oklahomas-aging-flood-control-dams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2015\/07\/09\/record-rainfall-magnifies-problems-for-oklahomas-aging-flood-control-dams\/","title":{"rendered":"Record Rainfall Magnifies Problems For Oklahoma&#8217;s Aging Flood Control Dams"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_24435\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-24435\" alt=\"Oklahoma Conservation Commission Watershed Technitian Dennis Boney inspects damage to Wildhorse 80's spillway in Garvin County. \" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/07\/PHOTO-7-9-ConservationDams-620x413.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"413\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Oklahoma Conservation Commission Watershed Technitian Dennis Boney inspects damage to Wildhorse 80&#39;s spillway in Garvin County.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>More than <a title=\"OK.govLink\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ok.gov\/conservation\/Agency_Divisions\/Conservation_Programs_Division\/Flood_Control_Programs\/\" target=\"_blank\">2,000 dams in Oklahoma<\/a> have protected lives and property from flooding for decades. But age is catching up with them, and many need repairs. And this spring\u2019s record rainfall is putting dams under even more pressure.<\/p><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/213869533&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=false\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p><p><!--more-->Catastrophic flooding used to just be <a title=\"NewsokLink\" href=\"http:\/\/newsok.com\/in-remembrance-the-hammon-flood-of-april-1934brsurvivor-shoulders-the-memories\/article\/1896842\" target=\"_blank\">part of life in Oklahoma<\/a>. Ask anyone who was around in the late 1950s, like Allan Hensley, who grew up on Rock Creek in south-central Oklahoma.<\/p><p>\u201cMy dad took me down and showed me Rock Creek when I was a boy; and a beautiful corn crop,\u201d Hensley says. \u201cAnd the next day it was water, flooded.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Dams Damaged<\/h3><p>Rain beats down on us as we stand next to the Wildhorse 80 Dam. This waterlogged earthen dam has been trying to hold back a lot of water since April.<\/p><p>\u201cErosion like this can spread incredibly quickly,\u201d Robert Hathorne, with the Oklahoma Conservation Commission, says.<\/p><p>Hathorne and Greg Lyons peer into a deep gash in Wildhorse 80\u2019s emergency spillway, where swirling water has displaced soil that\u2019s usually tightly packed with wildflowers and weeds.<\/p><p>\u201cSix to eight foot deep, probably 200 foot long, 35 foot wide,\u201d Lyons tells Hathorne. \u201cThere was just so much of it over the control section, it just finally washed out.\u201d<\/p><p>The Conservation Commission team is here to inspect the dam, which holds back what amounts to a farm pond in an overgrown field, well off the beaten path. Lyons says the recent erosion only adds to Wildhorse 80\u2019s problems.<\/p><p>\u201cIt\u2019s five feet lower now than it should be. The tower has deteriorated. It\u2019s a corrugated tower, and it\u2019s got holes rusted in it,\u201d Lyons says.<\/p><p>That means too much water is seeping through.<\/p>\n<h3>So much work, so little money<\/h3><p>Wildhorse 80 is one of 146 dams Greg Lyons is charged with inspecting and maintaining.<\/p><p>That\u2019s 146 dams for one guy.<\/p><p>The state <a title=\"OK.govlink\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ok.gov\/conservation\/\" target=\"_blank\">Conservation Commission<\/a> only has nine staff members to look after more than 2,000 flood control dams.<\/p><p>\u201cI could use help, yes,\u201d Lyons says. \u201cI do my inspections. I try to do my mowing, spraying, tree and brush removal. It\u2019s a lot on one person.\u201d<\/p><p>Conservation Programs Director Tammy Sawatsky says Oklahoma\u2019s repeating cycle of intense drought followed by devastating floods led to a push for dam construction in the first half of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century.<\/p><p>\u201cIt really was a grassroots program that started with the locals trying to find something that they could do to prevent the flooding and losing their productive cropland,\u201d Sawatzky says.<\/p><p>Locals pushed for dams, but the federal government paid for their construction.<\/p><p>\u201cMost of the sites were built in the 60s, when they were finishing at least one dam a day,\u201d Sawatzky says. \u201cThere are many people who have no idea that what they call the \u2018farm pond,\u2019 that maybe as a kid they went out and fished in it, that that is actually a flood control dam.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_24450\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-24450\" alt=\"From left: The Oklahoma Conservation Commission's Greg Lyons, Robert Hathorne, and Dennis Boney at the conservation district office in Pauls Valley, Okla.\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/07\/PHOTO-7-9-ConservationDams2-620x413.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"413\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left: The Oklahoma Conservation Commission&#39;s Greg Lyons, Robert Hathorne, and Dennis Boney at the conservation district office in Pauls Valley, Okla.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>Then the dams were handed over to the state and local conservation districts to run and maintain. Now that the dams are reaching the end of their intended lifespans, they need upgrading and constant maintenance. There\u2019s just one big problem: Money. State funding is hard to come by.<\/p><p>It will take about $4 million to provide the most basic maintenance this fiscal year. Upgrading the aging system is even costlier. Washington offered Oklahoma $32 million, but there was a caveat. The state would have to put up some money.<\/p><p>\u201cWe were needing $8.8 million to match those funds, and we didn\u2019t get any funding for that,\u201d Sawatzky says. \u201cSo, we have enough to do maybe one more rehabbed dam. After that we\u2019re at a halt.\u201d<\/p><p>\u201cNone of those numbers take into account the estimated six to eight million dollars in damage caused by the rain, like at the Wildhorse 80 dam, where Robert Hathorne looks out past the damaged spillway.<\/p><p>\u201cTo the person that owns that land, that\u2019s their life savings. That\u2019s their livelihood right there. That\u2019s where they graze their cattle. That\u2019s where they grow their wheat. And there are a number of ranches and farms down this way that are being protected by this structure,\u201d Hathorne says.<\/p><p>The public may never even notice dams like this one, but they\u2019re vital. Just from mid-April through mid-June, the Conservation Commission says they prevented about $134 million in flood damage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The state Conservation Commission only has nine staff members to look after more than 2,000 flood control dams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":24435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24431"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24456,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24431\/revisions\/24456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}