Corps 50 Years Behind

[Stump bumper]

Everyone saw this flood coming except for the Army Corps of Engineers. I just saw an interview on 40/29 and all shots on lake levels are made in Little Rock and they admitted they had to have the water on the ground, then watch what happened before they can act. I don't think that anyone on this forum couldn't have done a better job by generating that water instead of waiting for an emergency and blaming God.

This is our government, our resources and our homes and land being destroyed because of people that can't read charts, make decisions or who even knows if they are even at work until an "emergency" is determined.

This is not the first time it is every time we have storms out of the ordinary and I want to know how we can pull together and get someone's attention. That water was rising for days with no generation at all, if the Corps doesn't have control of that, the fire them and get someone who can take control, it is easy I have seen it happen.

I spent 22 years in the Army and I know if this was any other operation with the Army's name attached to it, there would be relief for cause going around and new people coming in overnight but for some reason these people seem to hold postions they can't handle until they drop.

[CEE]

bumper,

I don't intend for this to be a political comment [for obvious reasons], but It appears a lot of government organizations like the COE

are that way now.... Air Traffic Controllers don't seem to be the only ones asleep "at the controls". Look at the Security and

Exchange Comm leading into the recession, the Justice Dept, and so on. A sad state of affairs for sure!

Maybe they need a wake up call?

...jmo

[Brian K. Shaffer]

I am not sure that is the Corps of Engineers fault as much as it is South West Power Administration... SWPA will not let loose water unless it is being sold for peak demand prices. They want to keep as much water in these lakes as humanly possible.

Think of is as pennies sliding the turbines... now look at like SWPA does.. and those pennies are quarters.

just my .02, errr.. two pennies - Brian

[Stump bumper]

I am not sure that is the Corps of Engineers fault as much as it is South West Power Administration... SWPA will not let loose water unless it is being sold for peak demand prices. They want to keep as much water in these lakes as humanly possible.

Think of is as pennies sliding the turbines... now look at like SWPA does.. and those pennies are quarters.

just my .02, errr.. two pennies - Brian

There is a term for that "passing the buck" what we need to find out is where the buck stops and fire him.

[MOPanfisher]

I will only add a couple comments for now. 1) Just how do you prepare for 12-20 inches of rain in a few days? 2) The lakes are doing exactly what they are supposed to do, hold water as long as they can, then release it down stream to the next lake in the chain, until it gets to Bull Shoals which normally swallows it all and generates electricity all summer with it. You can reduce flooding but you cannot eliminate it, mother nature will always have bigger guns to bring out at some point.

The primary purposes for the lakes are Flood Control and Hydropower not recreation, fishing tournaments, or lake homes. The lakes hold back water while the downstream tributaries run down, then release the water in a controlled fashion to prevent flooding. Having some background and experience in the way the dams work I can say with certainty that the decision to release water at an amount to flood homes along Taneycomo was not taken lightly,

[Stump bumper]

I will only add a couple comments for now. 1) Just how do you prepare for 12-20 inches of rain in a few days? 2) The lakes are doing exactly what they are supposed to do, hold water as long as they can, then release it down stream to the next lake in the chain, until it gets to Bull Shoals which normally swallows it all and generates electricity all summer with it. You can reduce flooding but you cannot eliminate it, mother nature will always have bigger guns to bring out at some point.

The primary purposes for the lakes are Flood Control and Hydropower not recreation, fishing tournaments, or lake homes. The lakes hold back water while the downstream tributaries run down, then release the water in a controlled fashion to prevent flooding. Having some background and experience in the way the dams work I can say with certainty that the decision to release water at an amount to flood homes along Taneycomo was not taken lightly,

They also generate electricty on Beaver and Table Rock at the bottom of the darn, when the water goes out the top the amount of power you get of it is zero, the same as taking a gas hose and pouring it the back of your pick up and saying I will pick it later and put it my tank. Table Rock and Beaver were rising at a higher than expected rate for 5 days before anything was done, at this time is when max generation needs to take place, 1st for flood control, 2nd for not wasting resources for Hydropower. Oh, is that priotry anymore?

Just to review the "primary purpose for lakes are Flood Control and Hyrdropower" once you open a flood gate you have thrown both of those out, now you are just pulling the yellow handle and trying to save a darn and have an emergency. Nobody plans to fail but failure to plan leads to failure. One policy here would have made this much less of a problem, IF YOU SEE A 2FT RISE IN LAKE LEVEL IN A 24 HOUR PERIOD GENERATE AT MAX UNTIL YOU SEE A DROP IN THE LAKE LEVEL OF 1FT. Instead there was no generation that was zero(0) up to the point the flood gates were open.

Take a trip to Beaver Town and explain to those people why there was no release of water through the turbines before the situation got to the point they had to take out thier bridge, thier campgrounds(source of income) and flood thier homes and by the way why we were burning coal to provide electricty when there was so much free water coming down we had to store it in their living rooms but were not using it to produce electricty.

[MOPanfisher]

Please understand that I am not trying to be argumentative but am merely try to explain how the system of dams operates to reduce flooding. My heart and prayers go out to those whose homes and property are being flooded but that doesn't change the physics of the situation.

A dam doesn't prevent a flood upstream it is meant to control flooding downstream from the structure. If the rivers all over the basin are running at flood stage the last thing you want to do is dump water from the dams and make it worse, (whether it is through generation or floodgates doesn't matter, its still water going downstream into an already flooded area, which is exactly what you don't want). It gets held back and released in a controlled manner, yes in many circumstances there will be flooding down stream but not as much as would have been if water is dumped the instant the lake starts to rise while the rivers below are already at flood stage. Again Mother Nature will always have the ability to win a contest of strength. If some area has to flood it is always preferable to flood it with standing water (such as upstream of a dam in the "lake") to flooding with moving water which causes much more damage and destruction than standing water.

Could the lakes in the white river system or osage river system be operated strictly for flood control only, sure they could but nobody would like the results, Table Rock would start the rainy season out at no higher than 900 msl, preferably lower to provide more storage for flood waters. Ask the folks at Bull Shoals Lake or Harry S. Truman Lake about being on the end of the chain of flood control lakes. Bull Shoals if I remember right has something like 41 feet of elevation between normal and full flood pool. FLOOD CONTROL is the #1 purpose of the white river dams, the fact that they generate hydropower is a bonus.

[roy_eros]

I'm gonna have to agree with MoPanfisher on this one. They couldn't start releasing out of beaver or table rock when it was still coming down because the river levels below each dam were already at flood stage. Yes, it is a bad situation but they avoided flooding people out until they had no choice. What kind of attitude would you have if the weather man (who we all trust so much) would have been wrong and it stopped raining. Then what does the Corps say " Ohh sorry we took a preventative measure and flooded these people out of their homes based on the forecast"...don't think that would go over to well.

Even with beaver at record lows, and table rock and bull significantly below average we saw what mother nature could do in a few short days. There is really no way to prepare for that. A draw down of a few feet is really insignificant when your talking a rise of 20ft+ in a few days.

I'm also gonna throw out there that I dont think that multi-million dollar extra spillway is an "end of the world" type scenario as some have stated. I would be willing to guess we were very very close maybe just an inch or two more of rain from seeing that puppy opened up.

For those living down stream on the white they can just be thankful for BS Dam and the property and possibly lives it has saved this week.

[MOPanfisher]

Roy the only thing I might debate about your comments are that I think they were quite a ways from opening up the auxillary gates. Until all 10 gates were wide open I don't think you would see anyone make the decision to take out the hatchery and all the associated "stuff" downstream until all other options were exhausted. NOBODY wants to see the auxillary gates opened. While it would be better than a dam failure it wouuld be unbelievable how big a volume of water that could be released though all 10 regular gates wide open, the flooding in branson, hollister and powersite area would be of record proportions. IF the lake were at current level and there was another big rain event that all 10 gates couldn't keep up maybe but it would strictly be a "better to loose the hatchery, and maybe the switchyard below than lose the dam". I read on another thread that all 10 gates open fully could pour out something like 650K CFS or roughly 10 times the amount going through them (I believe they wer at 60K but not sure). Absolutely phenominal that amount if correct would be closer to the Mississippi river at St. Louis flow right now. http://waterdata.usgs.gov/mo/nwis/current/?type=flow&group_key=basin_cd

[Wayne SW/MO]

Overall considering there were heavy rainfalls over the whole upper White watershed the corp did a pretty good job of minimizing damage. Hindsight is always 20/20 and the most useful tool of speculators, but of all the options open to the corp it seems they chose the right one. Maybe their experience helps?