There are thousands of dams across Texas. Most people probably don’t give them much thought, but just how safe are they? And who watches over them?
News 8 Austin explores the answers to those questions in a special series called Opening the Floodgates.
News 8's Paul Brown spoke with reporter Veronica Castelo and producer Jenna Hiller about their work.
Q: Let's talk about Texas dams. First of all, any surprises along the way?
Castelo: There were several surprises that I think our viewers will be surprised to know; first of all, just how many dams are in Texas. We just think of the Highland Lake dams, maybe, if you live here, but there are more than 7,500 dams in Texas.
Q: That’s a lot of dams.
Castelo: There are thousands and I think what is most alarming is that many of them are not inspected on an annual basis. In fact, thousands are never inspected, so we really don’t know if these dams are in good shape or not. Another surprise is that many of these dams don’t have emergency action plans. And next week we’ll get into that, but basically, if there were trouble with these dams, the owners don’t know what they’d do and how they’d get that information out to those in harm’s way. So, I think people will be surprised to know just the sheer numbers of how many there are and how rarely they’re inspected and how unprepared some of the owners are if something bad were to happen.
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Texas dams
Watch the interview with Veronica Castello and Jenna Hiller.
 
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Q: Jenna, let me ask you. What inspired this series?
Hiller: Well, one of our producers found a study talking about the impact of population growth and population shift on dams, which was a big surprise to a lot of us. We don’t necessarily think of dams as one of the things that’s affected when more people move in to certain areas and it actually cited the Brushy Creek Dam in Williamson County as some of those that were the most heavily impacted. So, it kind of clued us in that there could be an issue we might want to explore and, from there, we got a database that included all of the dams in the country and it let us know what kind of shape they were in and how much attention they were getting.
Q: I know that you all looked at this for months. Was this just a focus on local dams here in our area?
Hiller: No, we did some traveling too. We headed out to West Texas to take a look at one dam there that really hadn’t been receiving, necessarily, the attention that you would expect for a pretty large dam. We went to the Houston area, as well, and then did a lot of traveling within Central Texas.
Q: Veronica, of those that you talked to, was there anyone who was really concerned about this?
Castelo: I think you’ll find a lot of concern from engineers. Engineers are, of course, the people who create a lot of these dams and the American Society of Civil Engineers are not happy with the way that these dams are being maintained and operated, so they have definitely voiced their concerns. Also, we are hearing from one specific legislator out of the Houston area, who is definitely working on trying to make sure that more of these dams are inspected and that people are safe and that they aren’t in any harm and that these dams are in good condition.
Part 1: The Trouble with Texas Dams
