By Jim Stanford on October 28, 2009
For 33 years it has stood as a monument to human folly: the ruins of an earthen dam that failed on first filling.
The collapse of the Teton Dam on June 5, 1976, released a massive flood down the Teton River that killed 11 people and drowned 13,000 livestock in eastern Idaho. The raging waters swept away most of the town of Sugar City; in Rexburg, an estimated 80 percent of the homes and businesses were destroyed.
The account of that day is riveting and reads like a transcript of the New Orleans levees deluged by Hurricane Katrina.
Maddeningly, Idaho irrigators and elected officials haven’t learned from the tragedy. Engineers are considering rebuilding the dam — in a canyon of porous volcanic rock — at a cost of possibly $1 billion. The study is a parting gift from the disgraced, toe-tapping Idaho Senator Larry Craig.
The wall of water rushes through the collapsing Teton Dam.
Opponents were heartened recently by the retirement of Idaho’s director of water resources, a prominent dam advocate. Still, Trout Unlimited is taking nothing for granted and has gone on the offensive to rally public opposition.
Could we really make the same dumb mistake twice? What’s nearly as infuriating is that we’ll spend millions “studying” the idea, just as the Army Corps is doing with a Colorado developer’s Green River pipe dream from Flaming Gorge.
Contact Idaho’s congressional delegation and let them know how you feel about the dead dam’s resurrection: Sen. Mike Crapo, Sen. Jim Risch, Rep. Walt Minnick and Rep. Mike Simpson. And Gov. Butch Otter for good measure.
Posted under Environment, Politics, Republican Party
Also raise your voice about the Green River. These are tough issues but in the end we need to learn how to live with the resources available. Within reason and not alter so much of our water ways. I studied water quality from the upper green river lakes all the way down to Utah below the dam to Browns Park. Then I floated Cataract Canyon in From Green River Utah through where the Green and Colorado come together. When you see the whole river system like this you feel its power and its purpose we have already altered her enough with the Gorge dam and Fontanel. I don’t know much about the Idaho situation but I am sure it is similar. We must put end to this.
Definition of insanity = doing the same thing over and over expecting different results….
We should be spending all this money on ways to use our water resources more effectivly, not on building more dams. The water laws that were signed in the 1920s need to be revisted and rewritten. Please call your government officals or get into action in other ways. Especially on the new Green River Dam. Water has already become a litited resource in other parts of the world. We must protect what we have hear before we are fighting over creeks rivers.
Marc Reisner’s indispensable book “Cadillac Desert” should be required reading for all who live in the West.
It’s entertaining, filled with gems (such as the origin of the oft-used “a billion here, a billion there . . .” quote) and it climaxes with a cinematic description of the greed, stupidity, hapless construction and failure of Teton Dam.