Everyone hates a leaky faucet. And we all know the hassles involved with repairing a flooded basement. But have you ever wondered what would happen if a dam holding back thousands of tons of water decided to break right into your own back yard? A Dateline NBC report revealed this threat does exist for thousands of unsuspecting residents across the country. In need of story ideas, Dateline producer Chris Scholl acted on a hunch that the nation's dams are old and decaying.
A quick Nexis search found Congressional testimony by Brad Iarossi, a legislative affairs representative from the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. Iarossi lamented not only the condition of many dams but also the lack of funding and immense workload many state inspectors face. Scholl knew he was onto something and asked Dateline reporter David Hinchman to look deeper into the numbers. Hinchman's findings formed the foundation of a June 27, 1995, piece titled "Swept Away." Looking deeper Hinchman knew he had to find the data to support his producer's suspicions and to make the story hit home with viewers.
His first move was to contact the Federal Emergency Management Agency and obtain its free National Inventory of Dams CD-ROM database. With information on more than 75,000 dams, the database compiled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contains various facts about the location, stability and inspection history of dams. Hinchman, focused on six fields to get the hard-hitting facts he needed. Dam age: Hinchman looked in the "Year Completed" field and focused specifically on dams that were more than 50 years old, assuming that these dams were more likely than newer dams to be in poor shape.
He was forced to rely on inferences of this sort because the database contains no field that specifically identifies the quality or condition of a dam. Believe it or not, there are more than 20 active dams erected as long ago as the 18th century. Dam location: One major concern of Hinchman and Scholl's was how many dams pose a direct threat to human life simply by their proximity to communities. The "Distance Nearest City" and "Nearest City" fields helped them determine this by indicating, in miles, how close the nearest city is to a dam.
Hazard rating: Another field that helps determine whether human life may be in jeopardy is the "Downstream Hazard" field. It rates exactly how dangerous a dam is to those living near it if the dam fails. Dams are coded H (high), S (significant) or L (low) based on the potential threat they pose. Hinchman said this field is much like the "Sufficiency Rating" field found in the National Bridge Inventory database.
Emergency action plan: This was one of the most telling fields for Hinchman when it came to determining the culpability of local dam officials. While some smaller, more remote dams are not required to have an emergency plan, more than 80 percent of the dams rated as high hazard had no plan in place. Inspection date: A final clue in helping to identify dam neglect and workload of state dam officials was the "Last Inspection Date" field.
Hitting the Road Inspecting the database and finding specific information made the Dateline team's job of "cruising around the country looking for dams with problems or that were literally crumbling" much easier, Hinchman said. It also allowed the team to focus on making some human connections for the story. Hinchman emphatically noted that when doing broadcast CAR stories this step is crucial. "You have to have a human face with the story," he said.
"Strictly survey stories tend not to work well for broadcast. In print, for example, you could go to the courtroom and get quotes from court records. In broadcast, you must find the person then fly or drive to photograph them." Use local resources Of particular help to Hinchman in finding the sources for the story were the engineers employed by the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. Not only were they extremely helpful in locating victims for Dateline to interview, but in many cases, they were "angry because they didn't have enough money to go inspect all the dams they needed to," Hinchman said.
And, as Hinchman and Dateline found out, such grudges can lead to good information. All told, the project took about four months to complete and produced some impressive results. Some of the most shocking, however, were completely unexpected. In the weeks following the story, several major dams failed, including one at the Folsom Lake Dam above Sacramento, Calif. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials decided to use the piece to lobby Congress for increased federal funding of dam inspection programs nationwide.
The association presented Dateline with a public awareness award for the investigation.