Thousands of Dams Are About to Collapse - Here's Why

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Dams are one of the true unsung heroes of engineering. Life before dams was unpredictable, and it was nearly impossible to build homes or run farms, without constant risk of drought or flood. There have been disastrous dam failures in Libya recently that have killed thousands. This got me thinking about the state of dams around the world if there are other disasters waiting to happen, and if dams still make sense today. Let's figure this out together!

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Chapters
0:00 - Introduction
0:30 - Libya Dam Disasters
2:30 - New Nile Dam
10:30 - Dams Around the World

what we'll cover
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[johnoriel]

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.

[pxnxofficial]

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.

[samuxan]

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

[allun]

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

[vinquinn]

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.

[justklaas]

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.

[tonytokes]

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.

[peterjackson]

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!🤞🏼😂

[MrMrdave]

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

[OrinThomas]

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.

[dougnash]

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.

[davidroddini]

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

[royreynolds]

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.

[R.-.]

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.

[Haroldus]

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.

[muralip]

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

[andyjackson]

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.

[marcelma]

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 YouTube.

[wondersteven]

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

[OpenSourceLowTech]

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.