1.5 BILLION gallons of water in 25 minutes

The morning of December 14, 2005 there was a breach in the Taum Sauk Upper Reservoir (about 100 miles south of St. Louis) that sent 1.5 billion gallons of water cascading down Proffit Mountain. Johnson Shut-in State Park was severely damaged. The Park Superintendent - along with his wife and three children - had their home, with them in it, washed away. Amazingly, they all survived.

Taum Sauk Reservoir is a pumped-storage hydroelectric facility that was built in 1962. The concept is that water is held in a 'lake' on top of a mountain until electric demand is high. Then water is released thru two tunnels, housing pump-turbine generators, to another lake about 800 feet below. At night, when electric demand is lower, the water is pumped back up to the top.

As with most bad things, the breach was the result of several things going wrong at the same time. Basically the reservoir was 'over-filled' because of bad (or missing) gauges. The overflow caused an already weakened wall to fail. You can read an independent panel's report here.

Ameren UE - the electric company - was fined $15 million. The sad part (to me) -- there were multiple indications that a catastrophe was imminent for several months prior to the event. Wikipedia has details and photos.

The $480 million rebuilding project began in December 2007 and is scheduled to be complete in May 2010. I was there this week to pick-up some of the construction equipment they were done with.

All I can say is -- WOW!

The new upper reservoir is a kidney-shaped dam constructed of roller compacted concrete. The inside is smooth but the outside is stair-step shaped. They have about 700 people working there. Needless to say, they have made a lot of improvements in 50+ years. In fact, the managing supervisor of engineers offered a " ... 100 percent guarantee there will not be another breach." Guess he doesn't believe in the 'never say never' thing.

So, that was the most interesting place I have been this week. Things are going well at the 'new place.' I am not driving anywhere near the miles that I was before. That's a good thing (mostly). Now if I could just do something about the weather here!