Was Truman's Engineering/Planning Flawed?

[Old plug]

If the corp recognizes the the The potential and rates ir Questionable. You better believe something could break. 

 

Wrench as i understand it there would not be a tidal wave top thing. It would occur along that earthen wall and water would still come down  real fast but it would be more like in a bulge because it did not happen suddenly

[Devan S.]

As I understand combined the dam/aux. spillway at TRL have the capacity to dump 1 million cfs. While I am not privy to the actual calculations involved, I would almost wager anything Bull Shoals could not accept a sustained 1 million(let alone 500,000 cfs dump from Table Rock). They might be able to pass that amount of water but that's assuming no other direct watershed inflows. The problem is there is always additional inflows since these activities don't happen in times of drought. At that point you'll have prevented the failure of the structure itself but you still have effectively flooded everything downstream.  

We are talking an amount of water equivalent to the Mississippi River here at 500k-1 Million cfs. I don't think there is a lake in Missouri that could sustain that kind of volume of water for any period. They probably realistically designed the dams to pass through volume on something like a 500 year flood rating not on a catastrophic upstream failure since the probability of an uncontrolled failure is so low. 

Anything can and will fail, the goal is generally to prevent the failure up until the point it happens and then when it does, fail in the safest(least impact) manner possible. Which is exactly why every dam in the entire country goes through planning for this kind of stuff.

No need for me to go to a meeting. Too much politics at play with people concerned about their business and homes....I want to sit down with the engineers, have them show me calculations, go over modeling software, run through capacities, how things work, let me twist the knob and work the levers, and then they can pay me a salary for my 50 hrs a week. 

[tjm]

Any dam can fail, i always think of Teton in Idaho when talking about how unlikely failure is.  Thoughts on down stream dams is that they are designed to pass water from huge storms, but if at maximum flow during a storm event an upstream failure would be more than could be passed and once over flow starts, the face and the base support erode rapidly.

I believe Bagnell and Powersite dams were both built by private entities prior too the current dam safety regulations based on many failures in the '70s, neither was designed as a flood control dam so both could be a risk in the case of an upstream event.

I also think the CoE spend a lot of money playing cya. A cry out about potential fail could bring $millions into their budget. I don't anticipate any failures soon.

[snagged in outlet 3]

14 hours ago, Devan S. said:

Is 200,000 cfs enough(that's basically doubling the flow of the MO at St. Charles at this point)

Mo is 429000 at St Chuck right now.

[Devan S.]

12 minutes ago, snagged in outlet 3 said:

Mo is 429000 at St Chuck right now.

Yep I got turned around....meant half not double.

[oneshot]

Everyone I talk to that has been to Truman Lake last couple days has said the Lake is up just about to the Bridges.

I just realized why Truman was holding back so much water. They wanted it just right for the Boat Races on Lake of the Ozarks.

oneshot

[Greasy B]

I suspect Trumans demise will be much less dramatic than a catastrophic failure. Truman like all reservoirs will slowly fill with silt. Some generation in the far future will wonder why 20th century Americans thought it was a good idea to turn a perfectly good river into a temporary lake.  

[Greasy B]

5 minutes ago, Greasy B said:

 

 

[tjm]

7 hours ago, Greasy B said:

I suspect Trumans demise will be much less dramatic than a catastrophic failure. Truman like all reservoirs will slowly fill with silt. Some generation in the far future will wonder why 20th century Americans thought it was a good idea to turn a perfectly good river into a temporary lake.  

I've been wondering that myself, since about 1960. Beaver lake was another nice river system back then.

[fishinwrench]

In all honesty that stretch of river wasn't much to get excited about.