Together with Rep. John Moolenaar, a Republican who represents the Midland area, Dingell reintroduced legislation this week that would increase federal oversight and regulations for dams. She believes dam safety will ultimately get needed resources from Biden’s plan but notes that it’s still early in the process.
“This stuff is just being written,” she said. “Some of the other major pieces I’m working on are not in there yet either.”
The nation has many urgent infrastructure needs, said Tom Smith, the executive director of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which just released the latest version of an infrastructure report card it puts out every four years.
The report card gave the U.S. a D for the condition of its dams, saying the country needs to spend $81 billion more than currently budgeted by 2029 to bring them up to safe and efficient standards. But dams were just one of 11 categories to earn the dismal grade in the 17-category report.
Overall, the cost of bringing the nation’s infrastructure up to an A by 2029 would require a $2.59 trillion increase over current budgets, Smith said. And Biden’s proposal, despite its enormous size, falls short.
“This is just the beginning of the game, but I would say there’s a lot of work to be done,” Smith said, noting that if any one part of the nation’s infrastructure is weak, it can jeopardize the rest of the system. “If there’s a problem with a dam, that can impact navigable waterways or surface transportation or wastewater or stormwater. All those things are related.”
Dam safety advocates say their cause is harmed by the fact that many people who live near dangerous dams are unaware of the threat. Many dams, built decades or a century ago, no longer serve their original industrial purpose. They often don’t generate enough revenue for dam owners to modernize them to withstand severe weather worsened by climate change.
“We need to do more to raise awareness,” said Brian Graber, the senior director of river restoration at American Rivers, a nonprofit.
“We’re seeing major public safety incidents related to dams every year,” Graber said, noting that in the last month alone, a wastewater containment dam partly breached in Florida, forcing the governor to declare a state of emergency, and a dam breach in Hawaii destroyed homes and forced people to flee.
“We have a limited attention span,” Graber said. When the dams collapsed in Michigan last year, the story made headlines for a couple of months, “but then people forget about it and these incidents repeat.”
Memories are still fresh in Michigan, said Sarah Schulz, who had to be rescued by boat along with her children and elderly parents during the dam collapse.
“All these months later, there’s still so much loss and trauma,” Schulz said, noting that her parents’ home was nearly destroyed.
But as someone who, like most of her neighbors, didn’t realize until last year that her family was endangered by a poorly maintained dam, she’s not surprised that dam repair didn’t get much attention in Biden’s announcement.
“Infrastructure isn’t super sexy, and dams might be the least sexy thing under infrastructure,” Schulz said. “You don’t even know when you’re near one, so it’s not the best political thing to sort of amplify, but it’s one of those ticking time bombs that can really devastate a community if our government and our society isn’t doing a good job of maintaining it.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
