Mich. governor says state will seek 'legal recourse' over failed dam
LBN thread: Mid-Michigan flooding after Edenville, Sanford dam failures: Everything we know
______________________________________________________________________
Source: Washington Post
Mich. governor says state will seek ‘legal recourse’ over failed dam
By Jacob Carah, Frances Stead Sellers, Andrew Freedman and Steven Mufson
May 20, 2020 at 9:49 p.m. EDT
MIDLAND, Mich. — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Wednesday that the state will "pursue every line of legal recourse" against entities responsible for the failure of a river dam that forced thousands of residents to flee gushing floodwaters amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Homes downstream from the dams were inundated by as much as nine feet of water, as the surge compromised a second structure along Michigan’s Tittabawassee River. As 10,000 residents evacuated the city of Midland, a central Michigan community of about 40,000 people, the river reached a level more than a foot higher than the previous record.
Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy — or EGLE — attributed the disaster to historic rainfall and deferred maintenance at the Edenville Dam, which is owned by Boyce Hydro Power LLC.
Federal regulators revoked the Edenville Dam’s license to produce hydroelectric power in 2018 over whether it could handle big floods.
“This incredible damage requires that we hold people responsible,” Whitmer said during a news conference Wednesday outside a high school being used to shelter evacuees. “The initial readout is that this was a known problem for a while, and that’s why it’s important that we do our due diligence and that we take our action as merited.”
-snip-
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2020/05/20/8ee0b9b6-9aad-11ea-a282-386f56d579e6_story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
