More than five years ago, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources ordered that a split in the embankment of a dam at Strouds Run State Park be repaired, according to inspection reports from 2001. That same year, ODNR officials recommended that an emergency spillway be installed because the dam was able to handle only 60 percent of the required amount of rainfall.
Neither of those repairs has been done, according to the last ODNR engineer to inspect the Dow Lake Dam.
ODNR last inspected Dow Lake in October of 2001, and it was due for another inspection last October, in accordance with a five-year inspection cycle conducted by ODNR's Division of Water. That inspection has been pushed back, however, as the division has been short-staffed in recent years, said Rodney Tornes, Program Manager of the Dam Safety Program at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR).
The first problem
ODNR first reported an earth slide ' essentially a split ' on the downhill slope of the dam's embankment in 1997, said Matt Repasky, a project engineer at ODNR and the last person to conduct a full inspection of the dam.
Repasky said the split was not a major problem but was something that needed to be fixed.
Dow Lake Dam has been monitored but not fully inspected since then. In 2004, officials told park staff to monitor the slide weekly, and Repasky said he thinks park staff did so for some time.
Coy Leham, the park manager at Strouds Run, said the only maintenance he does is mow the grass around the dam.
The Division of Water last visited the dam in May 2005, when engineers suspected a problem with the toe drain ' an internal drain at the dam's downstream end that collects seepage. Buildup in the drain could worsen the slide and, in time, result in failure of the dam. Nothing has been done to repair the problem.
Regular inspections of Athens County's seven Class I dams, including Dow Lake, are very important because those dams are of the highest hazard with the potential to affect the most people if damaged, said Tornes.
Spillover
The design of the dam and its spillway system also fail to safely pass the amount of rainfall and flooding required by the Ohio Administrative Code. The dam is able to pass only 18 inches of water, almost 60 percent of the required 31 inches, based on calculations in the 2001 inspection report.
If it were forced to handle more than 18 inches of precipitation, spillover could lead to erosion of the dam's wall or even failure of the dam, and the potential flooding could affect part of a highway and railroad nearby. Engineers recommended that an emergency spillway be installed, but no such action has been taken.
Dam with no plan
In accordance with the Ohio Administrative Code, Dow Lake Dam also is required to have an emergency action plan (EAP). This plan specifies how often the required operation, maintenance and inspection manual should be compiled. One typically is created once a year, said Repasky. No EAP was presented at the time of the 2001 inspection, and ODNR has yet to see a manual.
No penalties are handed down for such defiance of the rules, Tornes said, but if a dam is in poor condition for years and requests to fix it are ignored, legal action is taken with the Attorney General's Office.
Because there's not a threat of the loss of life in the case of Dow Lake Dam, though, no such action has been taken, said Repasky.
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Ashley Rowland
Inspection shows faulty design problem
