Wow I read the entire story. Very well written and informative BTW. This is really really serious. I hope the repairs scheduled to begin in January are successful.

I live in Houston and know little about it. But if you want to sell your house real cheap let me know!!!

Seems to me it NEEDS to be drained fast... I know rains keep popping up in large amounts but IMHO it should take priority as far as dropping lake level from flood stage. I know an indefinite number of factors have to be factored in, but at the amount being suggested to repair, it seems that would be a tiny drop in the bucket compared to what a TOTAL FAILURE & Breach would cost in property losses alone. No $ amount can be applied to even one loss of human life. A scary thought nonetheless...

3rd dam??? Guess old saying " the 3rd times a charm" just ain't too charming..

they won't drain the lake, likely they would build a new dam behind the existing one if it is not repairable.

The other 2 dams are actually the dams of lakes that were all combined to form Lewisville as it is known today.

Dude it took almost 4 months to drop the lake level 15 feet. It would take YEARS to drain it completely. The only flood gate on the lake is not very big. And all of the water has to go somewhere, it's just not that easy. Right now every creek, stream, and river is above flood stage up here. If they tried to drain it, it would flood cities. That's just not an option.

Doug's right, they'll have to basically build a partial secondary dam if they can't stop the bleeding.

Never mind. My point was that COE has known it for a LONG time. Should've been handled back in drought/low water period. Now we have flooding. Infrastructure has gone to pot leaving numerous dams in the USA in serious need of repair/replacement. Sadly it'll take a MAJOR catastrophic event such as a total failure to wake up the ones responsible. But, then again I seriously doubt that would even do it. They'd prolly just blame it on guns..Meh.

Y'all have a good night. I'm hittin the hay.

City Of Lewisville Resonse to DMN Article

well....there ya go. All is well. They "got this". No worries. Put away the supply bag. Put the money back in the banks. Pull up those for sale signs. Go fishing.


Just don't flip a jig at the land slides. It might be the straw that breaks the camels back.

This one looks serious but you never know about the politics involved. But a half million people in the affected area? Whew!

A dam breach occurred last spring when the road acting also acting as a dam on the south side of Athens Fish & Game Lake gave way. Not the whole way, but it had a failure bad enough to close Lake Athens for several days/weeks . . . I can't recall.

All these months later, the road is still closed as they repair and strengthen the dam.

I did the calculations back then and if every drop of AF&G ended up in Lake Athens, as I recall it would have raised the water level by only 16 inches. So, since Athens' conservation level is 440', and the lake rarely ever gets to 443' even last May, and homeowners all around the lake own land only down to 448', other than boat houses and docks, all would be okay.

Well, except a sudden breach would or could create a tsunami effect where a wall of water would come cascading down from the north end of the lake and that could really be an issue for that upper end area and its residents.

Here, on the Lake Lewisville issue? It would seem to be about a thousand times more problematic. There aren't all that many homes on Lake Athens and only a few would be in harm's way. Most or all homes would stay dry. Here, 431,000 could be impacted.

Wow!

Brad

Very interesting read. Thanks for sharing

This is a link detailing the Johnstown, Pa floods. I lost everything in the 1977 one including friends and three family members. As bad as this was a breach at Lewisville would be the biggest disaster we have ever seen. I hope somebody is taking this serious.

http://www.jaha.org/FloodMuseum/1936.html

Scary read, thanks Tony.

The confirmed piping issue and the big slide on the lake side of the dam (both referenced in the article) happened during May of this year.