GOP Fought To Cut Dam Maintenance Budget In Colorado – Now The Dams Are Breaking

The torrential rains in Colorado this week have resulted in flooding which has killed several people so far. This flooding is made worse by multiple dams which have already failed due to overfill, with dozens more at risk.
Why are they at risk? It turns out that state Republicans have blocked bills to deal with repair or maintenance on infrastructure throughout the state. These efforts, done in the name of fiscal conservatism, do not save money at all, and wind up costing far more than the money saved. Several bridges and dams had already failed before the flooding, which makes the added stress of the current conditions too much to bear. It is reported that over 100 bridges are unsafe while the number of dams nearing failure continues to climb, with over 300 dams listed as at-risk, and two dozen as of extreme risk.
The department tasked with managing the repairs for dams in the state is woefully understaffed and underbudgeted, and the state Republicans refuse to fund any repairs in their push for “small government.” This flies in the face of the reality of aging dam infrastructure across the United States, with 85% to be over a half-century old by 2020.

This is not a new scenario, of failure to maintain key infrastructure leading to disaster. In fact, it is a scenario the people of Johnstown, Pennsylvania know too well. In a wave of privatization in the late 1870′s, the state of Pennsylvania sold several key areas of the south fork river, including the South Fork Dam, to private interests. This eventually landed with a group of private developers, who used the land to found the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club in 1881. It was host to notables such as Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, and a few dozen other of the wealthiest men in America. It was said that letting private hands manage the dam, which held back the reported 20 million tons of water of Lake Conemaugh, would be more cost-effective than having the state manage it. Instead, the private hands sold off the drain management systems for the value of the iron scrap, making it impossible to regulate the lake water level, and the dam fell into disrepair as ‘turning a profit’ was more important than maintaining the earthen structure.
On May 31, 1889, after several days of hard rain, the South Fork Dam gave way. In the path of the 20 million tons of water, the town of Johnstown.
Read this first hand report by 6-year-old Gertrude Quinn Slattery, a victim of the Johnstown flood, to remind us of the horror which the Republicans seek to engineer on a nationwide scale:

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