Dam safety issue

by Dallas Erickson, Stevensville

As most of your readers know there has been some amazing weather around the world in recent months. In many areas they get their yearly rainfall in one day!! I saw several videos of communities where tornadoes hit. In every one of them the counties and cities had alarms that went off to give enough warning for people to take shelter in their bathtubs or closets or cellars to avoid losing their lives. They many times only have seconds! It is amazing how many people’s lives have been saved by those alarms. Just a handful of lives are lost in each tornado as a result.

In the Bitterroot Valley it is on record that the Office of Emergency Management has admitted that up to 10,000 citizens of the county could lose their lives in an inundation of Como Dam and/or Painted Rocks Dam.  That has been confirmed by the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Plan study. Yet this county and the cities affected have nothing in place to protect and save lives in an inundation and are silent! Isn’t that at least negligent, if not criminal?

By the dam owners’ own computer studies in their FEMA required Emergency Action Plans (EAP), Darby would be totally destroyed by up to a 25’ wall of water in a Painted Rocks Dam failure. Hamilton could be hit with up to a 50’ wall of water at the bridge by the hospital. That means the hospital and all the nursing homes and homes for the elderly could be hit with up to a 30’ wall of water! Would there be any warning? Possibly none since there are no “real time” Early Warning Systems (EWS) on either dam. And even if it was known that the water was coming there is no way to warn the citizens and if they were warned there would be bedlam because there are no evacuation routes marked or known!

The owners of Painted Rocks Dam, the State of Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC), refuse to do the commonsense thing and put EWS systems on the dam tied in to the 911 Center. Bitter Root Irrigation District (BRID), which owns Como Dam, refuses to put EWS on Como Dam and they along with the Bureau of Reclamation hide the EAP studies so the public doesn’t know the damage that would happen if it was to collapse, nor do they know the area that would be covered and destroyed by the resulting flood. Those are earthen dams and earthen dams break quite often.  

Where are the voices of the head of the Office of Emergency Management, Erik Hoover? Where is the voice of the Sheriff, his boss?  His job as stated on the sign at his office is to protect the citizens.

Where are the voices of the County Commissioners who have a duty to protect us also? 

Where are all the ministers of the Gospel who each could lose hundreds of members in an inundation? 

Where are our elected Representatives and Senators who so far only give lip service to this issue?

But here we sit with no system in place to save lives in an inundation that could happen in June (when most earthen dams fail) this year. Or maybe next year or the next. God knows.  

What should be done?

1. Real time EWS put on Como Dam and Painted Rocks Dam, tied into the 911 Center.

2. Some type of signal system set up in Darby and all of Hamilton to alert the public in the event of an inundation or threat of one

3. Evacuation Routes clearly marked on all the main roads.  

4. Evacuation Routes published and available to all residents.  

5. Open public meetings to discuss the issues.  

6. Annual exercises open to the public.

A very important quote that would help us with this: “If ye are prepared ye shall not fear.”