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@billyoung9538

7 ай бұрын

The completion date for the Hover dam is incorrect. It was completed in 1936 not 1993.

@wisdomleader85

7 ай бұрын

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.

@kh9242

7 ай бұрын

We need Dam celebration days. The Dam needs to become a thing we care about

@Eduardo_Espinoza

7 ай бұрын

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 🙂

@georgeleddy483

7 ай бұрын

(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.

@kathyjacques2688

7 ай бұрын

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

@justinjones5281

7 ай бұрын

They do. They just don’t have the money. Initiate climate change tax.

@rakeshmalik5385

7 ай бұрын

That's what happens when you allow politicians to be in charge of things... it usually ends badly.

@Pushing_Pixels

7 ай бұрын

@@kathyjacques2688 You do know that engineers are college educated, right? It's not something you learn on the job.

@kathyjacques2688

7 ай бұрын

@@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

We just need to hire the experts, Beavers. They will even cover the maintenance part.

@scpatl4now

7 ай бұрын

...and protect us from a warming planet!

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.

@scpatl4now

7 ай бұрын

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.

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.

@curtissyswerda6700

7 ай бұрын

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.

@tech5298

7 ай бұрын

That’s an amazing story. Thanks for sharing! 👍

@vinquinn

7 ай бұрын

They knew the mountain was unstable, but they went ahead with the project anyway.

@curtissyswerda6700

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

@newolde1

7 ай бұрын

​@@curtissyswerda6700the wiser man built his house on a giant surfboard.

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

@anandmehta2323

7 ай бұрын

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.

@truthsRsung

7 ай бұрын

Those damn dams, always confusing people who don't understand the serviceable life of materials like Concrete, Steel, and Clay.

@sjsomething4936

7 ай бұрын

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”?

@Poppa_Capinyoaz

7 ай бұрын

Boomers and Generation X were the worst generations at a most pivotal time in history.

@truthsRsung

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

@justklaas4703

7 ай бұрын

thank you, learned something new again!@@mal2ksc

@elainebradley8213

7 ай бұрын

Very inspiring!

@reiniernn9071

7 ай бұрын

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.

@mikewhitfield2994

7 ай бұрын

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.

@stevenlarratt3638

7 ай бұрын

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.

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.

@MoM-do7js

7 ай бұрын

You bet. They’re too busy pocketing the monies

@DavidRogers-cr8rw

7 ай бұрын

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.

@rootigaroot9922

7 ай бұрын

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

@oooloo99

7 ай бұрын

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.

@tony2tokes

7 ай бұрын

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

7 ай бұрын

the big question is: does climate change put more pressure on these dams.

@randomkindness1470

7 ай бұрын

those crossed fingers made me laugh out loud... I had high hopes till i saw the crossed fingers😂

@kadourimdou43

7 ай бұрын

@@autohmaeHow would it do that?

@peterjackson2722

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

@devonbikefilms

7 ай бұрын

@@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. 😂😂

At 5:47, I believe the Hoover Dam was completed in 1936, not 1993.

@billyoung9538

7 ай бұрын

this is 100% correct. I also noticed that error.

@dianapennepacker6854

7 ай бұрын

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...

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.

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.

@shamancredible8632

7 ай бұрын

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.

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.

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.

@BankruptGreek

7 ай бұрын

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

@dann5740

7 ай бұрын

@@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

@cthieding

7 ай бұрын

@@dann5740 where politicians come from

@MrGarymola

7 ай бұрын

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.

@truthsRsung

7 ай бұрын

@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.

@Pushing_Pixels

7 ай бұрын

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).

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 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.

This is one of those videos that when you watch it, you can’t help but say “dam!”

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 KZread.

The number of dams close to failure really shocked me

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.

@Nikoricci

7 ай бұрын

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.

@MoM-do7js

7 ай бұрын

@@NikoricciEXACTLY 💥

@lindacgrace2973

7 ай бұрын

@@Nikoricci Sadly, true. Yet another reason to favour small local projects. At least the money stays in the local economy!

@ipp_tutor

7 ай бұрын

Let's crowdfund it. No government involved!

@lindacgrace2973

7 ай бұрын

@@ipp_tutor Excellent for building a new project - a lot harder to pull off to maintain said infrastructure. Worth a try, though!

Great content.

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

@plektosgaming

7 ай бұрын

It's understood. Lol. Just some middle-manager thinks they can cut costs or speed up things.

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.

@plektosgaming

7 ай бұрын

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.

@dwainsellers6453

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

@Sleepy4213

7 ай бұрын

@@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!

@plektosgaming

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

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).

@calhutch3185

7 ай бұрын

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.

Could you provide a citation or two explaining how, and by how much, dams affect the Earth's rotation? TYVM !

@Surrealitys_View

6 ай бұрын

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?

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.

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

Oroville Dam spillway was a huge failure ..

I work in Emergency Management and the major thing that keeps me up at night is lack of infrastructure maintenance.

Correction: engineers don’t cut corners - their managers order them to cut corners…been there…

Very sobering update on dams - thanks

Your data for the largest dam capacity by output has omitted Grand Coulee Dam so Ethiopia would be 5th on your list.

@truthsRsung

7 ай бұрын

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.

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.

@Pushing_Pixels

7 ай бұрын

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.

@fayebird1808

7 ай бұрын

Tasmania 68,401 km2----- Quebec 1,365,128.44 km2 !@@Pushing_Pixels

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.

@plektosgaming

7 ай бұрын

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.

Loving your content, passion man.... X

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.

It's cold, raining and here comes Mr. Sunshine.

I enjoy you content and delivery!

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?

@Istandby666

7 ай бұрын

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.

@amorenew

7 ай бұрын

$250 is a good salary in Egypt

@Istandby666

7 ай бұрын

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.

@Sekir80

7 ай бұрын

@@Istandby666 I've seen desert blooming in documentaries only. Bet it was a great sight!

@lastfrontier6536

7 ай бұрын

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.

Thanks for the information and great video

I think you should do a video on how our dams have changed the rotation of the earth. 16:49

@KaitlyntheGardener

7 ай бұрын

Yeah, you mentioned this and kept going - I was very intrigued!

@ipp_tutor

7 ай бұрын

@@KaitlyntheGardenerNice point.

@mikeomolt4485

7 ай бұрын

Has to occur, as would, in theory, filling a bathtub with water. Simply a matter of degree.

@calhutch3185

7 ай бұрын

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.

There are dams, dams and damns. It’s the last one we don’t want!

Thank you for sharing your information.

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. ​

@truthsRsung

7 ай бұрын

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.

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.

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.

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.

Da Vinci Investigative Reporting! I love it!

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. 👍

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.

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

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.

Our favorite travel essential! 🌎

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.

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.

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.

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.

@calhutch3185

7 ай бұрын

this is part of the reason for the Elway dam removals the reservoirs were over 90% sedimented

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

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.

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

7 ай бұрын

Exactly.climate change has another name,weather!!! We humans just dont live long enough to notice the natural cycles.

@andyknolls8735

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

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.

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.

Telephone lines don’t start fires. Power lines do that. I can’t believe you said that!

@HutchinsonJC

7 ай бұрын

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.

Well done video

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.

An examination of bridges would be an interesting next companion infrastructure video.

Great job. Any interests in doing an episode on the Panama Canal drought and it's consequences?

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.

@vinquinn

7 ай бұрын

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.

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.

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.

@truthsRsung

7 ай бұрын

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.

great video Thank you

Nuclear power is in an analogous situation. There are installations all over the world, including in war zones and geologically unstable areas.

Exactly. Stop kicking the can. All future maintenance needs to be in scope and budget.

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.

@lacylaizure6540

7 ай бұрын

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.

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.

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?).

Dams are important to prevent flooding.

Gibe3 on the Omo in Ethiopia is also new and potentially catastrophic. Glad you mentioned it.

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."

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?!

This is shocking. I never thought about this

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.

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

@calhutch3185

7 ай бұрын

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.

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.

Look at the Colorado River dams and how drought is affecting the flows.

You need to look into the dam flooding break of Pueblo Colorado if im correct there was casualties in it it was a dirt one hope this helps

Whatsup Ricky! 🙌

Damned if we do, damned if we don’t 😢

Good channel. I'm subbing without watching other videos first.

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.

Hearing this is such a... dam shame!

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

Many dams here in BC have fish ladders to allow fish to continue their life cycle.

Love your content! This video was very informative. I came into it with the idea climate change would be an inevitable topic you'd bring relevance to but I was surprised by a lack of information regarding potentially rising sea levels and how they may effect dams around the world. Let us know if you find more about that if you find the content worthy of your program! Love to see more. Thank you very much.

@calhutch3185

7 ай бұрын

how does the rising sea levels of a foot or 2 over 80 to 100 years affect dams that are already old and mostly well elevated? most big dams are in mountain canyons.

Dam that was a good video Something I've been wondering about for years because they are aging

Dam son. In all seriousness South Carolina after a big 2015 storm has been much stricter on regulation on small dams.