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Lake of the Woods looks at dam options Date published: 9/2/2008
BY ROBIN KNEPPER
It was the first question for outgoing Lake of the Woods President Eldon Rucker at yesterday's annual meeting of the Orange County homeowners association. "What are our options regarding the dam?" he was asked. "Well," said Rucker, "there's always a legal challenge. We need to look into the pros and cons of that." Now that officials at the state Division of Dam Safety have notified LOW that its attempts to avoid implementation of the state's requirements for the dam on its main lake have failed, the question circulating in the community is "What's next?" Other options include getting access to the legislature, Rucker said, and getting in touch with "our legislators." This has already started, as LOW officials have once again called on Sen. Edd Houck to intervene on their behalf. In an Aug. 29 letter addressed to Gov. Tim Kaine, which he submitted to LOW board members last week, Houck asked the governor to delay enactment of the new dam regulations. These have been approved by Kaine and are due to become effective Sept. 26. Houck wrote that text that allows "unique characteristics and factors" of dams that was included in the old regulations "should be re-inserted into the [new] regulations" and the state Department of Conservation and Recreation should be directed to consider these separate from the technical aspects of analysis. Both DDS staff engineers and LOW's own dam engineers have determined by technical analysis that, because there are occupied homes and businesses in the inundation zone of the dam, the LOW dam is a high-hazard dam and must meet the state's highest safety requirements. A dam is considered high hazard if its failure would result in the loss of life or excessive property damage. Lake of the Woods has admitted that there are six homes in the inundation zone of the dam in harm's way but thought it had dealt with that situation by getting five of the homeowners to agree to evacuate in the case of dam failure. The sixth homeowner would not agree but sold his house to LOW for $230,000 in July. After further analysis, DDS staff found that there were three other houses at risk, as well as 32 other, mostly commercial, structures. But even if everyone agreed to evacuate, there is no legal authority available to remove people from their homes. Therefore evacuation cannot be guaranteed. Even other factors, such as a good record of maintenance and operation of a dam and an adequate emergency action plan, are not sufficient to justify a lowered standard for the LOW dam. Robin Knepper: 540/972-5701
Date published: 9/2/2008
as humanity can get. Here's what that attitude can wrought:
http://www.jaha.org/FloodMuseum/clubanddam.html
What the H are they smoking: Agree to evacuate the area? Does LOW have a prophet on retainer so they know when it's gonna go? YET they've got $ to upgrade glof courses, etc. What creeps.
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