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Posted on 05/15/2026 7:28:07 AM PDT by Twotone
Big Creek Lake is a 3,600-acre man-made reservoir that holds 17 billion gallons of water and serves as the main source of drinking water for Mobile, Alabama, and other nearby municipalities, producing roughly 60 million gallons of potable water a day.
Apparently, someone wanted to blow up the dam holding it all back.
Divers conducting a routine repair at the dam hemming in the lake, which is also called the Converse Reservoir, discovered an explosive device hidden under water on Tuesday, according to Alabama's largest water utility, the Mobile Area Water and Sewer System.
Following the discovery of an apparent grenade-type IED at the dam, the MAWSS alerted the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office, reported Al.com. The sheriff's office subsequently initiated a multi-agency response — which included FBI, Mobile Police Department, and Alabama Law Enforcement Agency bomb squads as well as the Daphne Search and Rescue Team — to secure and neutralize the device.
The Gulf Coast Regional Maritime Response and Render-Safe Team ultimately retrieved and detonated the IED.
The reservoir — public access to which MAWSS has been fighting to restrict — and the dam are federally designated critical infrastructure.
"Our top priority is keeping your drinking water safe," MAWSS Director Bud McCrory said in a statement. "This is an unprecedented threat, and we are fortunate that this device was discovered before it could cause serious damage to our water supply or harm to individuals."
"We are grateful for the professionalism and competency of our law enforcement partners — as well as the quick thinking of our contractors and divers — in identifying this device and safely destroying it," added McCrory.
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It was a firecracker some redneck was using for fishing.
Democrats !
Yeah, sounds like someone was having fun and one of their toys didn't detonate.
Would be interesting to know who long they think it’s been there and how far under the waterline. Algae accumulation etc...? What was to be the trigger mechanism? Any electronics, fuses attached?
That sounds about right. A grenade size IED isn’t going to do much damage to a 5000 feet long dam.
Sounds like someone was doing a little fishing by use of
an explosive device. Are was lost and/or didn’t detonate
as expected.
Dams are extremely hard to bust with explosives. The US Army Field Manual for Explosives and Demolitions, which can be purchased on Amazon, includes estimates of how much C4 plastic explosives are needed to bust reinforced concrete, of various thicknesses, among other things.
The weight of water is enormous and dams do fail, and unless you actually know the physics involved with underwater detonations, along with load age regression data on the dam and hydrodynamics, you should probably not make assumptions that it is not going to do much damage. Heck, dams fail just from too much rain (Johnstown Flood, PA 1889, 20M tons of water) I would never assume that just because of the size it would not precipitate a cascading failure.
Big Creek Lake holds 69,000 acre-feet of water, which is a weight of ~70M tons of water (3.5x Johnstown). The dam is 74 years old, 5000 feet long (almost a mile), and 75 feet high. It is an earthfill dam. We do not know if the explosive was up against the dam, or in the middle of the lake, but since they found it when doing a dam repair, I am going to assume it was in pretty close proximity to the dam which would maximize its potential impact.
So if it went off, the question becomes not would it “blow up the dam”, but rather would the concussive force create fractures that would weaken the structure enough to initiate a cascading failure that could take days/weeks/months before the actual dam collapse.
The next questions would then be had it gone off, would the damage have been found soon enough to do something about it (fix/evacuate downstream), and finally, if it was not found until too late, how many people would have died. Even small dam failures cause massive loss of life ... like Johnstown.
Generally there is a buoy line in front of a dam like this to keep people and boats away from the dam.
Wouldn’t want to get sucked into the outflow ;)
Even if ir ese a M67 grenade, it would t have harmed a Dam.
It’s informed posts like yours that keep many of us here on FR.
A grade sized explosive is no threat to a dam.
China?
Inspect all dams.
The answer to that question is a resounding NO That little thing would have done nothing to any damn. Add to the diminutive "blast" the fact that it is very likely that other explosives were used by the bomb disposal team to detonate the device, so the actual destructive capability was even less than was exhibited in the video. Add to that most of the force of the blast would have also gone upwards into the water rather than having an impact on the earthen structure.
I live outside of Mobile. I’m having a hard time taking this seriously. I saw a video yesterday where they blew up the “IED” and it was about like an M80 firecracker. I talked to a local police chief (not involved) and he had not heard anything more about than what was in the news. I could be wrong, but I just don’t think there’s anything to this.
Except, of course, a grenade-sized explosive would not harm a dam. Would you like me to send you the charge tables for earthen dams with water tamping?
A lot of thinking going on there…. If if if
It’s like Covid. They didn’t know anything but they thought about all the ifs and we ended up with lockdowns vaccinations economic collapse and Joe Biden as president.
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