By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Amistad Dam is in no danger of failing, County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. has assured county residents.
But Owens also said work must be done to mitigate more than 50 identified sinkholes near the dam, adding there is currently no money allocated by the federal government for the necessary fix.
Owens made his comments about the dam and citizens’ concerns about its safety during Wednesday’s regular term meeting of county commissioners court.
An update on the dam was among the items included on the agenda of the meeting, and one citizen, Del Rioan Bea Vallejo, spoke about it during the citizen comments portion of the meeting. (Separate story here.)
After the completion of citizen comments, Owens moved the item dealing with the dam up on the agenda.
Owens began by saying Vallejo’s comments that there had been no meetings by officials about the dam are “misinformation.” He said county officials have been in meetings with International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) officials “and the bottom line is they were working on trying to get a company hired” to address the issues at the dam.
Owens said, “There’s a lot of misinformation in what Ms. Vallejo just said. I’m just going to throw that out there. I will tell you that we had a report in February that we will put on our website, that way you all can see it.”
He added there are 53 identified sinkholes near the dam, and the IBWC is predicting the cost of mitigating them at $80 million to $276 million.
“They don’t know. I think we can agree that they really don’t know, and they won’t know until they start drilling holes to check and see what it’s going to take in order to fill what’s down there,” Owen said.
He discussed the repairs as currently envisioned by the IBWC, which are included in the report on the county’s website, and spoke about concerns he has heard from county residents that the water level in Amistad Reservoir will be lowered to do the work.
“We’ve had a lot of phone calls in the last two weeks about how is this going to affect lake levels. We’ve been assured, and we’ve been told over and over and over again, that the work that’s going to be done on the (mitigation) of the sinkholes, in order to help with the sinkholes and alleviate that problem, will not have any effect on lowering the lake or anything having to do with the lake,” Owens said.
Owens said the county’s emergency manager, Roland Garza, was at the dam in mid-July to meet with officials there to discuss an emergency management mitigation plan.
“I want to stress, that nobody’s concerned that the dam’s going to fail, but there were concerns, and there have been concerns for more than two years now, what happens if something fails? They’re not concerned that there’s any problem with the dam. They’re concerned right now that they have problems with the sinkholes, but it’s not going to cause the dam to fail, and I need to be perfectly clear on that,” Owens said.
Owens added there are currently no funds earmarked by the federal government for the mitigation work.
He also spoke about a possible schedule for the mitigation efforts. He said he has been told it will take three months to hire a firm to design the fix, at least “another year and change” for the construction bidding process, then 18 months for the actual construction work.
“One of the things that I need to stress, though, is everybody that we’ve talked to, as a county, as the county judge, as the emergency management coordinator, they have told us over and over again, that the lake will not be affected by the construction or the mitigation of the sinkholes, because that will take place up on top, not down at the bottom,” Owens said.
“People have been asking what do we do if the dam fails? We’ve been asking the same question. The federal government doesn’t even have that concern right now, at all. That’s not a concern,” the county judge added.
The 830 Times then asked Owens why, if there are no concerns about its structural integrity, the Amistad Dam has been designated a Level II (safety concern) by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Owens replied, “We asked that question two years ago, when that came out, why the heck would you put that classification (on the dam), and they said, well, that’s just the way we do it. So I said, do we need to go and look at a mitigation plan in order to be able to move people in case it breaks? And the answer was no.
“But, we’ve had this conversation: what happens if something happens to the dam? How far is the water going to go out? We’ve got a little bit of control because of where the dam’s at, but who are they going to call is the main thing, if something does happen, who are they going to call?” he added.
Owens said the county emergency management coordinator is working with city officials, as well as with officials in Eagle Pass and other cities downriver, adding that information also would be posted on the county’s website.
“But at this point, are we scared that the dam is going to fail? I really honestly believe that the people that are there, that are monitoring the situation, they’d have no reason not to tell us the truth. So I don’t think there’s an issue. There’s an issue with the sinkholes, and one of the things of that everybody needs to walk away with is we’ve had concerns,” Owens said.
He added, “We had a phone call this morning, do I need to sell my house and leave because this is my vacation home, what do I do? I can’t tell you what to do, but I will tell you the water level (in the lake) is low right now. It hit the lowest level that it had ever been on July 17 of this year. It’s gone up a little since then, about a foot, but it’s like everything else, it’s going to go down, it’s going to go up, and like I told that individual earlier, I would hope that you don’t leave Val Verde County.
“Are they going to drain the lake, because that is a question that I was asked, and the answer is no. In order to fix the problem, the answer is absolutely no,” the judge added.
The 830 Times then asked Owens if the county has a mitigation plan in place in case there is a catastrophic failure of the dam.
“We’re working on it. (People have) asked, what is our plan if it breaks? Our plan is, first, to notify everybody to get out, and again, we’re totally confident that that’s not going to happen, but, if something was to happen, we’ll get a phone call, make sure that people are notified, either through the city of Del Rio, their system, or through our system, and I was asked, at that point, what happens?” Owens replied.
He said he would not ask the county’s first responders “to go down there in the middle of all this stuff if it happens.”
Owens said county officials have been working for several years to get copies of a “flood inundation map” from the IBWC.
“We’ve been working two years to get a copy of that map. I can tell you that we’re closer now than we’ve probably ever been because some of the information that was given to us this month was how far it’s going to extend out. I’m not going to go into that right now for the simple reason that I have not addressed that with the court, and that plan, in order to mitigate this, has not been approved,” he said.
Owens said he and other county officials involved in discussions with the IBWC “have asked a lot of questions.”
“And we’re just as confused as you all,” County Commissioner Pct. 3 Beau Nettleton interjected.
Owens said one of the things “we got asked to do” was that once there is better cost estimate for the repairs “is if we could all get together, city, county, not only here but Eagle Pass and everybody downriver from us and begin to write letters and lobby for the money.”
“And it’s going to be real hard to pinpoint the exact dollar amount because in reality, they don’t know what’s down there. Until they start drilling holes, they don’t know how big the caverns are. They’re monitoring (the situation). They’re monitoring how much water is going through. The last conversation we had with them was that (the sinkholes) are not getting any bigger, but they’re not getting any smaller,” Owens said.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com.
