2 dam failures in MI 7

[Phil1934]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michigan-dam-breach-10000-evacuated-state-of-emergency-declared

For those wondering if 2020 could get any worse

 

[LittleInch]

Well I didn't mean it was concrete but you seem to be correct. The plug idea looks like it was designed to go once over topping occurred and result in washout of maybe a metre or so of earth on top of the concrete spill way.

This is a rendered gE impage but seems to show the detail you describe.

I suspect the remains of the concrete spillway is the disturbed water area you see on the drone footage.

However if the water level is so high and the flow so massive that you over top the entire earthen bank on its far side then the fuse plug is irrelevant as there is now nothing to stop virtually the entire lake from draining.

It's only because the downstream river has backed up so much that the lake isn't already empty now.

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[JohnRBaker]

Here's a video report from our friend Juan Browne, of Orville Dam fame, with a report on the failure of the Edenville and Sanford Dams (I guess he's now considered an expert on dam failures):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpZMb5TR-hU

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
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[Milliontown]

However if the water level is so high and the flow so massive that you over top the entire earthen bank on its far side then the fuse plug is irrelevant as there is now nothing to stop virtually the entire lake from draining.

Yes, you are correct. I was being overly semantic, my apologies. The whole reason this dam, the Sanford dam, had its license revoked was because it would overtop during the PMF, about a 1/10000 annual chance of exceedance storm. While this storm was not that event, the upstream failure released more water. This dam did fail from overtopping with inadequate spillway capacity, fuseplug or not. Interestingly, we can see the two most common failure modes between these two dams.
Also going through aerial imagery, the concrete spillway wasn't even original, and was added after a FERC order in 1999. Who knows what the damage would have been without the spillway.

 

[JohnRBaker]

I don't think it's so much that the downstream rive has backed-up as it's just that the Sanford Dam is the LAST of four dams on the Tittabawassee River and from there on down, it's all just a big flat flood plane that has basically filled-up. If you watch the Juan Browne video that I posted it kind of shows that near the end of the video when he shows that last section of the river as it flows through the city of Midland.

Here's a news report from a local (Saginaw) TV station from yesterday afternoon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCOrAaaSuA0

Note that my wife and I used to live and work in Saginaw, until we moved to SoCal in 1980, and before we were married, my wife used to live in Sanford with her aunt, whom we're now trying to get in contact with.

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[human909]

Sorry for the multiple messages, but I'm still thinking this through. It is possible this was purely a slope failure due to the increased seepage and rain saturation. In that case, the slope was not stable during an unusual event and should have been rehabilitated. As I said before, this portion did not have the toe drain. Looking at the other portions that did have this toe drain, an additional berm was constructed at the toe. This berm could have helped with slope stability, but again this is all purely speculation.

Don't apologize. You seem to be one of the more knowledgeable on dams here. I'm pretty rusty.

The original video was slightly longer. I've seen it elsewhere but I can't find it again. The original video showed significant water seeping through especially towards the top though it did not seem like it was overtopping. From my limited knowledge, it seems like a slope failure from a saturated dam wall.

 

[LittleInch]

I saw a few photos of the broken dam and it looked like a clay plug but not all the way to the top. So the earth mound gets saturated with a high level and then slides down fatally weakening the dam wall which breaks through moments later.

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[GeoEnvGuy]

I had a closer look at the video posted by Human909

The google earth shows there is a road or path at the crest which is 6m or 20 feet at least.

The video image shows water up to the downstream berm, roadway is flooded and that is not 6 m or 20 ft of crest.
Water is overflowing
Sinkhole on crest

Shallow circular failure occurs

Water eroding circular failure

I am not familiar with fuse plug spillways but if the goal was to have the spillway erode down to below the elevation of the working spillway then it worked. If it was only supposed to erode a minimal height but maintain the reservoir to the working spillway elevation than it did not work. The fact that a circular failure occurred instead of a erosion rill which expands shows the downstream slope is over steepened. When the water subsides it will become evident as to how much of the spillway remains and if a channel formed lower than the intended spillway crest.

 

[CWB1]

I don't understand why when operating licenses are removed that they are not forced to empty these dams, drain them and keep them empty until they are sorted.

Lake Wixom was lowered and the plant idled after they lost their license however the governor and state attorney general filed a lawsuit after residents complained about property values and loss of marine wildlife. The state purportedly recently forced them to increase the water levels again nearly to capacity for summer recreation, which isnt surprising as this hasn't been an overly wet spring.

 

[LittleInch]

This is edenville on 22nd May

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yuVaZFBGG8

Basically the dam has ceased to exist and water level would be lower if the downstream system could accept more water.

What's left of the concrete "fuse plug"

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[itsmoked]

Crazy that you have a dam, feeding a dam, feeding a damn! And, that if the first one craps-out it's automatically going to kill the next one, that's going to wipe-out the third one! It's insanity.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[LittleInch]

I think it's fairly common - you just don't want the first one to fail.

Does give you a bit more time to prepare the downstream locations for the rise in water.

The dams don't look very deep though (apparently about 40 foot or 12m of normal water height from the base river elevation) - it takes up a lot of square area for not much depth of water which accounts for the small power generation plants that exist. That part of the country must have been very sparsely populated when they dammed the rivers.

All four of these seem to have been built in the 1920s by Boyce hydro power. Generating capacity is about 5MW on the edenville site apparently. It's no wonder that the plant lost money if this was their main income when also having to maintain / repair the dam, gates etc.

It's also a way of controlling peak water flows without having to create a massive single dam.

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[human909]

Crazy that you have a dam, feeding a dam, feeding a damn! And, that if the first one craps-out it's automatically going to kill the next one, that's going to wipe-out the third one! It's insanity.

It is normal. You build damns not to fail. Failure should not be an option. You build them to safely release water in extreme weather events. The insanity is the politics that can allow a dam with known safety risks to continue operation for so long.

Here is the Shiawassee River the partner river, count the dams...

https://web.archive.org/web/2011082...iver.org/images/ShiawasseeWatershed_11x17.pdf

Here is the colorado:

 

[IRstuff]

Strings of dams make lots of sense, when you wish to capture the potential energy change not captured by any single dam, particularly when a single dam can't possibly deal with higher potential energies.

Nevertheless, the fact that the dam's level is so high, even after failure of the dam suggests a water event exceeding its design parameters.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[JohnRBaker]

Here's that map showing the Shiawassee River and its system of dams (courtesy of human909):

Also note that, particularly in the southern part of the state, around Detroit and down near the Ohio border, many of these small dams, with power plants, were build by people like Henry Ford to supply power to the various small towns where he and other early auto manufacturers were moving some of the production of components and auto parts out away from the big cities.

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[JohnRBaker]

When the water drops, history is revealed:

Wixom Lake steam shovel unearthed

https://nbc25news.com/news/local/wixom-lake-steam-shovel-unearthed

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
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[EdStainless]

So if the state told them to raise water level that means that the state accepted the liability I guess.
In WI the state has seized some dams where owners wouldn't/couldn't do the maintenance.

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P.E. Metallurgy

 

[CWB1]

Politicians accept liability? Good luck with that, that would be like them admitting they were ever wrong. Per the local media, the MI governor has said she intends to pursue legal action to seize the dams and sue the operator for the cost of damages. There is also conjecture as to whether/not it makes sense to spend the money to rebuild the dams or find better/cheaper means to control the two rivers. The primary purpose of these apparently was flood control, not power generation so safety might be a bigger factor than money. To be fair tho, there are many summer homes/cottages in the area for wealthy Detroiters.

 

[3DDave]

The original purpose of the Edenville dam was power generation; not sure about the others. As people built homes along the lake it also became a source of property taxes and seen as a recreational use. I don't see evidence they had flood control as a main use; in fact it seems like they were known to be vulnerable to failing in this use as they had insufficient spillway capacity. One article suggests this has been a known issue for 20 years.

The reason it hasn't been adequately addressed seems to be a competition between moneyed land owners unhappy at losing their summer fun and their property values and a late participant, the Natural Resources Department, that wanted to keep fresh water mussels healthy by keeping the water levels up.

The people who really suffered from this are the ones downstream who had no direct economic connection to back any complaints.

 

[EdStainless]

The ones that WI has seized have usually been removed as parts of river renewal projects.
Property owners just have to suck it up, unless they really want to shoulder the costs of the project themselves.
There have been a couple of re-builds (The Dells) but those have been rare.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy

 

[JohnRBaker]

Here's a video, posted yesterday, showing what's left of Wixom Lake, after the Edenville Dam failure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa7tacsTLK0&feature=youtu.be

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
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