Are we learning from our failures? Can we learn from Midland.

My heart goes out to the families and the communities of Sanford and Midland among others impacted by this major catastrophe in mid-Michigan. Another unfortunate failure of our critical infrastructure that may have been avoided.  Thankfully, I have not seen reports of injury or deaths due to the actions of local emergency responders who evacuated the area in advance of the failure. 

I don’t want to speculate on the mechanism of failure of the Edenville dam yet because it is too soon and this is a very complex situation.  What I do want to do is share the facts as I see it and some observations and lessons that we continue to learn by our actions or lack of action.  These are solely my thoughts after spending a significant amount of time the last couple days, talking to our clients and team in the area and reading lots of media and social media posts.

As a practicing geotechnical (soils) engineer, these failures related to earthen structures always interest us as this is the kind of work we train for and we get excited about. As a business owner with 300+ staff including a few in the affected area, the impact to the region, both to the people and the environment concerns me greatly. This is a tragedy in so many ways and it appears that it could have been avoided.

Some of the the facts:

• The Edenville dam was almost 100 years old, well beyond its design life and was not adequately maintained.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edenville_Dam
• It was originally built to provide water, power and eventually recreation to the area and allowed development of the surrounding area.
• The owner and state and federal regulators have been fighting over the status and maintenance of the dam for years. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/05/20/dangers-edenville-dam-failure-evaded-state-scrutiny/5228559002/
• Funding to maintain the dam was either not available or not spent. Modifications and repairs that the owner and the regulators were fighting over had not yet been made.
• The area experienced a significant rainfall event, some saying a 500 year + storm event. This storm likely exceeded the design storm for the dam.
• The dams upstream were releasing water to prepare for the flooding.

Some of the impacts:

• Many people will be displaced for a significant time and have lost everything when their homes, businesses and possessions were wiped away by the floods.  
• The families living on the lake either full time or part time have lost significant value in their properties and will likely be challenged to sell. The dam is now gone and the lake that the homeowners enjoyed is no longer there and likely won’t be for years to come.
• The hydro company that received revenue for generating power has lost all the revenue and will likely be bankrupt after this event impacting the other dams it owns in the area.
• The taxpayers of the state of Michigan and the US will now foot the bill for the emergency response, clean up and restoration of all the homes, businesses and communities impacted downstream.
• There are reports of possible contamination from the sediment and water from the dams as well as the possible impact from the breach of the Dow wastewater treatment ponds downstream may have significant environmental impact downstream
• Many roads and other infrastructure were damaged or destroyed and will impact the area until they can be restored. 
• The debris and sediment will require significant cleanup and a place to put all the debris which will take months if not longer to complete. Further impacting the area.
• The impact on the local environment and wildlife will be significant for many years to come.
• Many other unknown impacts will surface in the weeks and months to come. 

LESSONS FROM FAILURE WE CONTINUE TO LEARN AND REPEAT 

As a Geoprofessional and a licensed Engineer, I have spent my career consulting with private and public owners of infrastructure and how to develop, maintain and redevelop their projects and infrastructure while mitigating the risk during construction and operations. When dealing with soils, water and mother nature, the risks and the uncertainty are heightened.

Failures in my experience are caused by a series of unfortunate events and decisions that link together that stress a human system in this case the dam.  In this case an aging piece of infrastructure well beyond its useful like was hit with a significant storm event which may or may not have breached the dam under different circumstances. The dams upstream were also releasing water which may have added to the impact by causing additional flow to the dam. I don’t want to speculate on how the dam actually failed. What I do know is it survived well beyond its original design life and still managed to operate long enough to allow for emergency responders to evacuate the area and save many lives that might have been lost if the dam had failed under lesser conditions.

More importantly, based on the reports the people who owned it and regulated it knew that there was a risk of failure under an extreme precipitation event. Unfortunately the extreme event occurred prior to implementing mitigation repairs to address the risk. So, it should not be a surprise that the dam failed.  

 In my opinion, three major items contributed to the ultimate failure of the dam and ultimately the failure to the communities downstream:

1. The extreme precipitation event that occurred in the area prior and during the event.

2.     The lack of funding from either private sources who benefitted from the dam (the hydro power company and the Homeowners on the lake), or government funding sources (from the Federal,  State or local taxes) to improve the dam's spillway to address the identified risk of not being able to pass a significant flooding event.

3.     The fighting and lack of practical solutions between the owners and the regulators.  In the end, the risk had been identified and was understood, but the parties were busy fighting about the solution and how to pay for it when they were hit with the storm they feared and knew would possibly breach the dam.  

EXTREME EVENTS AND THE IMPACT ON SOCIETY

The storm is reported to have exceeded the 500 year storm event for the area. Understand that this does not mean that the event will only occur every 500 years. It means that the chances of that much precipitation falling in a given year are 1 in 500 or a 0.2% chance. Also, we need to understand that our storms are based on precipitation data from only the last hundred years or so and models. So the storm is still an estimate of what probably could occur. So we know it is possible for this kind of extreme event to occur but is very unlikely in any given year to happen.

Like our current COVID-19 pandemic, we know that pandemics like this can occur but the likelihood of them happening is very low. However, the impact, as we have learned, when they do occur is very significant. When preparing for events like these it is very challenging to prioritize all the varying and competing interests. With the pandemic the major competing interests are our health and safety and the economy and peoples livelihoods.  We have to find ways to deal with the "and" and not the "or". We should not be thinking health and safety or the economy. We should find a way to think about health and safety and the economy.

With the dam, they faced the same competing interests with the economics of repairing the dam versus the risk of a low probability but extreme event occurring and causing a major catastrophe. In hindsight, it is easy to say spend the money to fix the dam, however, just like preparing for COVID, are we willing as a society to spend the money to address these types of events. Unfortuanately, after the failure occurs we have no choice but the spend the money and it is always many multiples of what could have been invested originally to address the risk. In life, we often have to make difficult decisions with much uncertainty and trading various risks and opportunities against each other.  

In this case, there are reports that the State was mandating the water level behind the dam be managed to protect the freshwater mussels in the lake. This is another example where we have to be thinking about "and" and not "or". I don't know if this had an impact on the situation but clearly one of the stakeholders believes the decisions made may had influenced the problem.

Our national association, the Geoprofessional Business Association (GBA) www.geoprofessional.org has a long history of sharing lessons learned thru case histories in and understanding risk management and mitigation in the built environment.

I am also on the Board of an professional liability insurance company providing insurance for geoprofessionals, so I see many claims and failures.  Our CEO, has studied the many claims (and failures) reported over the past 50 years and has developed critical success factors for infrastructure and development projects. Many of the challenges and conflicts reported in the media for this situation indicate the actors doing the opposite of what typically leads to success with critical infrastructure.  

Similar to COVID-19, mother nature played a big role in this event, I know from being involved in and reviewing many failures, many times these failures are because the parties are not working together to solve the bigger problem and many of the individuals are focusing on their competing self interests alone such as their "bottom line" or " the environment" rather than understanding the complexities of the situation and truly understanding the risks of all the potential outcomes and working together to find a practical resilient solution or outcome that benefits all parties.

LESSONS LEARNED

• Extreme events will continue to happen, we need to be prepared for them.
• We need to better understand the costs and risks associated with our infrastructure. Clearly here the costs of upgrading the dam and making the system more resilient would have been far less than the cost of the cleanup and restoration of the communities impacted.
• We have to focus more on working together and finding practical solutions and looking at the whole problem not just the parts. Fighting leading to inaction on leads to pushing the can down the road utltimately leading to bigger costs for all later.
• We need more funding for critical infrastructure as the cost benefit of investing before failure is obvious. Unfortunately it takes a failure of this magnitude to see the light.
• We need to learn from the lessons of our past.

Hopefully, we will learn from this catastrophe and work together to make better risk management decisions based on the facts, good science and looking at the entire situation. Mother nature will continue to throw extreme events at us, it is our role to understand the potential events and how we can be best prepared. As we have learned recently in both these recent extreme events, we don't think we have the money to maintain all our infrastructure (or prepare for a pandemic), but we truly don't have the money to clean up the aftermath.   

In closing, I am thankful that lives were spared, this situation could have been far worse if the dam hadn't held as long as it did. I am also grateful for our team here at SME who in less than 24 hours pulled together an emergency response team to assist our clients and communities in the impacted area where needed. In addition, our SME Cares team set up a donation fund for the Midland Community Area Foundation and are actively looking for volunteer opportunities as we have a number of people who grew up or have family in the area. As with most catastrophes we will see the worst in people while people struggle to understand what happens and find someone to blame but more importantly we will see the best in the passionate people who work to rebuild and revitalize the community and I am confident the area will recover and be stronger than ever.