Reservoir Breach in Missouri

[Elspode]

Originally Posted by marichiko

Was that thing an EARTHEN dam? The civil engineer's nightmare? Oh, well, just one more bit of infrastructure that wasn't maintained because we are too busy destroying the infrastructure of Iraq and paying Halliburten and Dick Cheney an outrageous sum to rebuild over there.

Also, much as I'd like to blame this screwup on the current administration, this is a *privately owned facility*, and as such, not maintained by the Corps of Engineers. No, this was an industrial accident, apparently caused by the failure of a level-sensing system which allowed the reservoir to be overfilled, resulting in overtopping and breaching of the impoundment.

Water *will* always win, especially if you pump it hundreds of feet above the surrounding terrain, and attempt to hold it there in a tenuous structure. If you've ever visited there, you can see quite clearly that it leaks, and it has done so ever since it was constructed. Numerous photos can be found (with a Google search for "Taum Sauk") which show the enormous lining project that was done a year ago in an attempt to stay the leakage. That was pretty much successful, but it is still unknown how much hidden erosion of the structure might have occurred during the life of the facility, if any, and whether or not such unseen scouring contributed to the failure of the overfilled reservoir.

Just last year, AmerenUE withdrew a proposal to build another unit like this, only four times larger, on a nearby peak, because the lower impoundment reservoir would have inundated too much environmentally significant land. Public complaint quickly squelched the project.