EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a two-part series on the designation of six water impoundment areas as illegal, hazardous dams.
Six North Olympic Peninsula property owners — including forest-product companies in Port Angeles and Port Townsend — have been told they have illegal, unpermitted, mostly earthen dams on their property that could endanger human life should they fail.
The state Dam Safety Office, a branch of the Department of Ecology, mailed notices to 141 property owners across Washington state saying their dams are not on the state’s list of permitted dams.
Safety Office officials said a dam is not simply a wall that holds back a body of water.
The state defines a dam as any impoundment of more than 10 acre-feet of water, or 3.25 million gallons — including ponds and sewage lagoons — which, if it failed, would flood at least one home.
Property owners were told in the notices that the Safety Office must interview them for about two hours and also inspect their dams.
That first inspection costs the property owner nothing.
But if structural integrity is lacking and the dam must be upgraded, the owners must pay the agency $1,400 to approve a dam modification plan and annual inspection fees of at least $300.
Repairs could cost a minimum of $10,000 and range to tens of thousands of dollars for extensive repairs, Dam Safety Office Supervisor Doug Johnson said.
Those repairs could range from building buttresses and spillways to draining out the water.
The Dam Safety Office will provide technical assistance and advice, but no agency funding is available to property owners.
Current property owners are responsible for repairs even if they didn’t build the dam.
“They are kind of stuck with this white elephant, and stuck with fixing them up or making or breaching them so they can’t pose a risk,” Johnson said.
In their notices, the property owners were told: “We anticipate that many dams will need at least some structural modifications to resolve a threat to their integrity or to provide adequate spillway capacity.”
Two categories
Property owners received notices for two kinds of dams: high-hazard and significant-hazard dams:
• A significant-hazard dam could flood one or two homes if it failed, causing significant property damage.
• A high-hazard dam could flood three or more homes if it failed, causing significant property damage and loss of life.
The state pinpointed four high-hazard dams in Clallam County and two significant-hazard dams in Jefferson County.
Clallam County’s high-hazard dams are owned by Interfor Pacific Inc. forest products company on U.S. Highway 101, west of Port Angeles; Andrew Shogren on Deer Park Road, south of Bear Meadow Road; Dale and Carol Lohrer on Melton Road, west of Port Angeles; and Douglas Short near Jimmycomelately Creek, east of Sequim.
The two significant-hazard dams in Jefferson County are owned by Russell Lowry in Chimacum and Port Townsend Paper Co.
Those with high- or significant-hazard dams also will pay an annual inspection fee for non-annual inspections for as long as they own the properties.
If the dams are high-hazard, the property owner must pay $814 a year for Ecology to inspect the dam every five years.
If the dams are significant hazard, the property owner must pay $297 a year for Ecology inspections every 10 years.
“We pro-rate it so they don’t get hit with a big bill all at once,” Johnson said.
What’s a dam?
The definition of a dam was broadened in the ’70s and early ’80s while the Army Corps of Engineers inspected dams nationwide as part of the National Dam Safety Program, Johnson said.
“At that time, the definition was expanded to include not just traditional dams but waste ponds or any type of impoundment that holds a liquid,” he said.
“We started looking at any impoundment as being created by a dam.”
But the agency issued permits only for new ponds, sewage lagoons, dams and other impoundment areas, not existing ones.
“We didn’t look for existing stuff,” Johnson said.
“There were lots of waste ponds but no effort to bring them into compliance,” Johnson said. “The current effort we are looking at predates 1980.”
An Ecology intern discovered the abundance of unpermitted dams while she was doing an inventory of bodies of water more than 2 acres in the state’s agricultural areas.
Using aerial photos, the department identified existing dams with houses downstream.
“But there were a lot of other apparent dams that we knew didn’t have a permit,” Johnson said.
Five dams failed in Washington in the last 15 years. All were unpermitted.
“We decided, gee, we are finding so many [unpermitted dams] by happenstance, we should see what’s out there.”
Spillways
The biggest problem with these dams is the lack of adequate overflow spillways, Johnson said.
Most part property owners have been cooperative when they learn they have an illegal dam, Johnson said.
Most also didn’t even know they had a dam on their property.
“People who have called in have primarily been like, ‘I don’t have a dam. That’s a pond I see, not a dam,'” Johnson said.
If property owners don’t fix their dams, they can be fined $5,000 a day.
“Basically, if they don’t cooperate with what we are telling them to do, we can issue orders, or fine them,” Johnson said.
“But we wield that stick very cautiously. We get more done that way. We are trying to work with the property owners.”
On Monday: Property owners express shock, take stock.
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
