Dam Nation

You'll See

If you've followed BOOJUM! with any regularity then you'll know we have an unhealthy interest in the catastrophic failure and collapse of dams, because a dam operating normally is one of the dullest things imaginable, but if you breach those retaining walls a watery variety of Hades breaks loose.  Millions of tons of water rolling unstoppably over everything it encounters, carrying tens of thousands of tons of debris.  

     South Canada, given it's enormous size, number of whacking great rivers and mountains, is awfully fond of dams that generate power, possibly because all that water is 1) provided for free and 2) will never stop, because The Water Cycle.  Art!

     This is the Taum Sauk Upper Reservoir, post-construction and pre-filling.  You might well ask what a completely enclosed dam is doing atop a mountain, so I'll tell you.  Thanks to the Youtube channel "Practical Engineering" for bringing this disaster to our attention.  Art!

     This is the TS's partner reservoir, at East Fork on the Black River, sitting 750 feet lower in elevation.  Both sites come under the 'Pump Storage' design, which is an accommodation of design thanks to the price of electricity.  During the daytime, water from Taum Sauk would be allowed to flow downhill, generating electricity when demand was high and making money all round, whoopee.  At night, when demand (and prices) were low, the East Fork reservoir would pump the water back uphill into Taum Sauk.  The efficiency of said system was calculated at 70%, high enough for it to be a viable concern.  Art!

Overall layout

     The dam, or reservoir, went into operation in 1963, operating remotely with NO on-site staff, a design feature that - you may be ahead of me here - became a flaw.  What could possibly go wrong?

     You had to ask.

     There had always been leaks at TS, which were periodically addressed when the dam was drained for inspection and maintenance and finally an inner inner liner was added that finally seemed to solve the problem.  Art!

Leakage rates over time

     What really exacerbated matters was Ameren, the body that owned and ran the dam, deciding to sell energy to other entities, which ramped up the number of days in operation to 300 per annum.  Increasing operational parameters by 200% and doing so for decades might be expected to have a negative knock-on effect.

     And indeed it did.  

     Prompted by a tour group that witnessed water flooding over the retaining wall at TS, Ameren sent down a dive team to check on the level sensors that reported back remotely on water levels within the retaining walls.  They found the sensor cables were all flapping loosely around, generating false readings on water levels.  Ooopsie.  Art!

The dam, with puny human vehicle for scale

     As a word-around the monitoring meters were instructed to delete 2 feet from the current water level as reported by the sensors.  What could possibly go wrong?

     Again with the asking! 

     On December 4th, 2005, one of the pumps back-filling TS failed to stop when the retaining was was overtopped,   Art!

05:14 a.m.

05:15

05:21

     By 05:32 the reservoir had practically emptied, spilling 6 billion litres of water downhill, into St. John's Park and the camping ground there.  In what must be a Greek gift to Ameren, it was the winter off-season and the summertime crowds of hundreds of campers were entirely absent, although 5 people living in park accommodation were injured.  Art!

Before and After

Just after

     The Federal Energy Regulatory Agency's report highlighted several different issues that all synergised into a major disaster.  For one thing, the 'rockfill' that the dam's core had been made of had far too much earth in it, meaning that it settled over time.  Thus over decades parts of the retaining wall became several feet lower than others, meaning that the emergency sensors that ought to have raised the alarm and cut the pumps, did not trip.  There were no on-site supervisors.  There was no CCTV, even when there were known issues.  Nor was there a spillway, meaning excess water did not get drained away before topping the retaining wall.
     FERA fined Ameren $5 million dollars, and the state of Missouri, where the pump storage facility operated, fined them $117 million.  Such a swingeing hit to their profits meant they rebuilt Taum Sauk completely, in 'Roller-Compacted Concrete'.  Art!

     As if I could tell the difference.

     Well, there you go, a tale of woe about H₂O when it's not slow.

What Can Possibly Go Wrong?

Two topics that Conrad treats with equal contempt are Donold The Orange Land Whale and cryptocurrency, the former daring to call Prez Bidey 'fat' and the latter being an unmitigated scamble.

     When they combine in an unholy duumvirate* of political profiteering and platitudes, Conrad needs to lay in more popcorn.  Art!

Sorry, it's hard to not find an unflattering picture of Donold

     DJ Tango has endorsed the launch of a new cryptocurrency from World Liberty Financial, which means he pimps for it, gets paid for pimping it but doesn't have to actually invest in it at all.  Which he hasn't.  

Only $9 million worth of the new cryptocurrency have been sold, it was reported by Coindesk, badly missing estimates of $300 million worth of sales.

     'Badly missing' is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here.  3% of projected sales is an utter, dismal, crushing failure.  One supposes that the credulous and gullible amongst Pumpkinhead's supporters lack the money to invest in this pipedream and cannier investors are avoiding it like a plague that also has a plague.

     Trump, who couldn't look up either 'ethics' or 'morals' in a dictionary because he cannot spell, has previously been a confirmed crypto-skeptic, which shows his moral compass deviates to whomever is willing to pay him.

A (Slightly-Interrupted) Journey With Berni

Yes, I'm afraid that FPG #24, 'Cosmic Volleyball', has no images present on teh Interwebz, so we're skipping straight to #25, which does.  Art!

     Hmmmm.   No, Conrad cannot see the utility of waging warfare against an hostile alien lifeform whilst clad only in decorative lingerie.  I mean, if it was a specimen of Hom. Sap. she was fighting, then a male might be distracted and a female disgusted, which potentially gives one an edge, but this Protean horror?  No.

Whoah! As Keanu Would Say

There I was, perusing my notebook/journal, and there's a note in there - as there might well be - about 'Possums', so I nipped over to Youtube in order to try and track down the hilarious clip of yesteryon, and what did my eyes espy?  Art!

     That's "Royal Fleet Auxiliary" to you, and Cammell Laird are a shipyard on the Clyde.  Proteus - from whom I derived 'Protean' - is from Greek mythology, and was able to change shape at will, also being associated with seas and rivers.

     Thank the lord aloft for armoured underpants that defy the chisel-teeth of the Coincidence Hydra!

This Will Have To Do

I cannot find the relevant Youtube Short, so here's a still of opossums eating bananas.  Art!

     The greedy wee rascals habitually eat with their mouths open, which would be undeniably gross in a member of Hom. Sap. but which they can get away with.  Art!

"More banana?"

     A lady on the original YT Short commented that she raised a possum from a baby; it was housebroken, used a litter tray and slept with her daughter when she was a child.  They are pretty appealing little duffers, which may be why Darling Daughter likes 'em.

Finally - 

The rains seem to be clearing up but I'm not going to walk into Lesser Sodom this afternoon, on account of a head-cold that makes me lurch around as if nine sheets in the wind.  7

*  There's two of them.