Free Republic

Drought has dried up what was Mexico’s second-biggest lake, destroying a once thriving fishing economy in Michoacán. The scale of the problem? Lake Cuitzeo should have 800 million cubic meters of water, but today it doesn’t even have 200. Now, the more than 300-square-kilometer reservoir has become a cemetery for fishing boats and a shortcut for motorists to reach Morelia, the state capital of Michoacán. The water disappearance also creates frequent and prolonged dust clouds that sometimes reach nearby communities, affecting health of residents, as well as causing allergies, respiratory illnesses and gastrointestinal complications from the bacteria they transport. Everything...

Idaho Congressman, U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, has introduced a plan to breach four existing hydroelectric dams in the Northwest to help improve salmon runs. It is part of a $33 billion Project that includes extra economic development funds, compensation for lost revenue for certain industries and billions in incentives for farmers. The dams slated for removal under this plan are the Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite dams. Part of the plan requires environmental groups pledging not to use lawsuits over federal environmental-protection laws violations. Oregon recently banned coal based energy. California has an energy shortage that...

China is facing major issues on many fronts and now may soon be facing a food shortage. With recent torrential rains and flooding, dams are being blasted and other dams, like the Three Gorges Dam, are at the brink. The following is from Geoffrey Quartermaine Bastin, CEO, FoodWorks Group of Companies: The Beijing Government is facing a crisis on many fronts. Not only has it been caught out with the Wuhan SARS-Cov-2 (COVID-19) virus, but its efforts to expand influence in the South China Sea (what the Vietnamese call the East Sea) have outraged its neighbors in ASEAN and...

The California Department of Water Resources is being forced by looming El Niño rainstorms to open the uncompleted Oroville Dam main spillway next week. The Department of Water Resources issued public reassurances on February 21 that uncompleted repairs at the Oroville Dam, which forced about 188,000 emergency evacuations after a near collapse in February 2017, are not a problem, since DWR did not expect the reservoir water level to rise enough to use the spillway anytime soon. But the timing of DWR's announcement came just a week after the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center issued an advisory that an...

Chinese tourists account for more visitors to Thailand — and much of Southeast Asia — than from any other country. The Thai village of Sob Ruak, at the heart of the Golden Triangle region where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet, is no exception. Tour buses routinely disgorge thousands of Chinese tourists to buy trinkets, snap selfies and tour the nearby Hall of Opium Museum. And it's not just tourists coming from China. About every month, a few Chinese gunboats cruise down the Mekong River through Myanmar and Laos from China's Guanlei port. They announce their arrival with a barrage of...

Full header: "Hundreds of Thousands of Californians Almost Lost Everything Thanks to Progressive Politicians and Scientists" How quickly Californians and the media forget. Less than 18 months ago over 200,000 Californians faced the possibility of losing everything--their homes, their belongings, their livelihoods, even the towns they live in – not because of drought but because of rain as the nearby Oroville Dam threatened to collapse. The dam in Northern California is the highest in the United States. It was struggling to cope with the amount of rain and melted snow pouring into the reservoir. A failure would have seen multiple...

Britain's last surviving Dambuster says he still misses his crewman as they are remembered on the 75th anniversary of the iconic WWII raids. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, George 'Johnny' Johnson says he feels lucky to still be alive as he turns 96 later this year. On the night of May 16, 1943, Mr Johnson was one of 113 airmen from the Royal Air Force 617 Squadron to fly to Germany for one of the most complex military operations of the war. Operation Chastise set out to destroy three dams deep within Germany’s Ruhr valley in order to set back the...

NBC Bay Area obtained a memo written by engineers at California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) in June 2017 that raises safety questions involving seven dams owned and operated by the agency. The memo was sent by DWR to the state’s Division of Safety of Dams and copied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees dam safety and regulation around the country. It states the seven dams are in need of immediate evaluation. The memo questions whether the seven dams, which are similar in age, design and construction to Oroville Dam, may have, “potential geologic, structural or performance issues...

Ice dams and flooding pose a danger to Haddam residents, the town’s top elected official said, prompting her to declare that an “emergency condition” exists in the riverside town. First Selectwoman Lizz Milardo made the emergency declaration Thursday. The proclamation will be forwarded to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in hopes he will proclaim that the town is in a state of emergency so the town may get state and federal assistance for any damage. “The First Selectman has declared that an emergency condition exists throughout the said Town…It has now been found that local resources are unable to cope with...

“We have bridges that are falling down,” then-candidate Donald Trump told Fox last August, pledging to double the amount Hillary Clinton wanted to spend on infrastructure as president of the United States. “We’ll get a fund, we’ll make a phenomenal deal with the low interest rates and rebuild our infrastructure.” One year later and eight months into his presidency, Trump has continued to double down on his lofty promises — during “Infrastructure Week” in June, he told his supporters in Cincinnati that the U.S. “deserves the best infrastructure in the world.” But the administration has been slow to move its...

MANTECA, Calif. (KCRA) — A levee near Manteca was breached Monday night leading to mandatory evacuations in the area, according to San Joaquin County officials said. Mandatory evacuations were ordered for people living within the below boundary:.... The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for the pictured area on Monday, Feb. 20, 2017, due to a levee breach south of Manteca. The warning is set to expire at 7 a.m. Tuesday.

The spillway gates at Don Pedro Reservoir could open as early as 3 p.m. Monday, but no earlier, authorities said. The Turlock Irrigation District made the declaration late Sunday night due to “volatile changes in forecasts for upcoming storms,” an agency press release stated. “Landowners, growers and those living along the Tuolumne River, out of an abundance of caution, should undertake necessary steps to protect their property and livestock as Tuolumne River levels will rise quickly,” the agency stated in an 11 p.m. press statement. Opening the spillway would provide relief for the brimming reservoir, which was just under 4.5...

The National Weather Service in Reno, Nevada is warning of an "imminent" dam break about 85 miles northeast of the Reno-Lake Tahoe area. The NWS is urging people to evacuate immediately. URGENT: Retention basin above East Dayton, NV failing! FLASH FLOOD WARNING UNTIL 6:40PM. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. #NVWx #DamFailure pic.twitter.com/frXe8qhyI5 — NWS Reno (@NWSReno) February 21, 2017 The area was already dealing with a Winter Storm Warni

Tear down this dam? © Getty Images Oroville dam, the tallest in the nation, is currently in danger of structural failure. Thousands living downstream from its desperate cascading water releases are evacuating their homes in Hollywood disaster-film fashion. Something premodern and apocalyptic like this was not supposed to have happened in a postmodern California of Google, Hollywood, and Napa Valley wineries. California’s politicians and pundits in recent years of drought swore the state was entering a cycle of permanent drought (and thus saw no need to start construction on a single dam to store the rain and snow that supposedly...

Michigan has thousands of aging and under-maintained dams that could pose localized risks. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality tells the Detroit Free Press that all but six of the state's 88 potential high-hazard dams are approaching 50 years old, the average engineered life span for a dam. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave Michigan a D grade on the condition of its dams in 2009, saying more than 90 percent of the state's nearly 2,600 dams would reach or exceed their design life by 2020.

The damaged California dam is in the spotlight now, but it’s not alone among the facilities needing upgrades if more problems are to be avoided.How many U.S. dams are at risk of a crisis like the one currently unfolding in California, as officials work to stave off disaster at the compromised Oroville Dam? The short answer is, we don’t really know—but probably quite a few. Until this month, Oroville’s emergency spillway had never been used in its nearly 50-year history. After weeks of rain and a breach in the dam’s main spillway, officials turned to the auxiliary one to help...

Millions Went To California Dam In Good Shape The Washington Free Beacon is reporting that of the $34 billion that the State of California received from Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, $0 went to the failing Oroville dam while millions went to a dam that was in ‘good shape’. From The Free Beacon: Despite more than a decade of warnings about Oroville, there is no public record of the country’s tallest dam receiving any of the more than $34 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act sent to California for infrastructure projects. Over $22 million in stimulus funds did go...

Rising water filling up Santa Clara County's Anderson Reservoir, which was 99.3 percent full as of Wednesday, is expected to flow over the dam's spillway as a result of this week's impending storms. Unlike the potentially catastrophic situation with Lake Oroville's emergency spillway, the Anderson Reservoir's operational spillway is not at risk of failure, according to Santa Clara Valley Water District officials. Despite that good news, officials in Santa Clara County are warning residents living along Coyote Creek and near Kelley Park to be on the lookout for potential flooding. Water officials for the past month have been releasing water...

In Oregon, seven dams have been deemed unsatisfactory - one in Josephine County, another in Curry County. Oregon Water Resources Department and Josephine County Parks say they know the McMullen Dam in Lake Selmac has problems. They have known for years. "With the parks budget being just over $1 million, the cost of the dam itself is going to come in between {$1 million and $3 million] dollars to improve it," Josephine County Parks manager Sarah Wright said. To get an 'unsatisfactory' result means the dam cannot contain or handle a moderate sized flood. At Lake Selmac, that's rare -...

Problematic, in a very big way even if the offer was made.Qatar’s ties to Al Qaeda and ISIS aren’t news. They’ve effectively served as intermediaries in everything from ransom exchanges for hostages to Taliban negotiations. But actually trying to secure terrorist swaps for prisoners on their own behalf would have been a new frontier. Before he was released from a U.S. maximum-security prison last week, a confessed al Qaeda sleeper agent was offered up in a potential prisoner swap that would have freed two Americans held abroad.According to two individuals with direct knowledge of the case, the proposition was...