While you’re busy freely spending the high-valued U.S. dollars everyone in America has mass quantities of, the rest of the country is gripped with fear of bridge collapses and such. And whattya know? Kentucky made the top ten list of fear because half the state is about to drown.
Popular Mechanics released its list of the 10 Pieces of U.S. Infrastructure We Must Fix Now and #8 on the list is the Wolf Creek Dam:
Fixing the 5736-ft.-long Wolf Creek Dam in Kentucky is one of the highest priorities for the Army Corps of Engineers. …the Corps lowered Lake Cumberland and began an ambitious repair effort. But despite the ongoing construction work, the danger of collapse hasn’t been significantly reduced, and probably won’t be for years–the earliest possible completion date for the work is in 2012. Until then, downstream communities, including Nashville, Tenn. remain at risk.
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1 Jeff Noble // Apr 8, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Interestingly (if you are a subscriber as I am), this Spring’s issue of Kentucky Afield, the official publication of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife, contains several references to Lake Cumberland, none with more than a fleeting mention of the ongoing work of the incorrectly-named Wolf Creek Dam on Lake Cumberland, the largest dam east of the Mississippi, and which actually dams the Cumberland River and not Wolf Creek.
First there is mention of a release of White Bass reared over in Herrington Lake. Nearly one-fourth of another article has Cumberland’s fishing forecast for the year, citing the drop in the level of the water as a good thing, saying it “concentrates the fish” in a given area. Some areas that were “too deep” before, especially for walleye, are now ideal. Bass fishing remains very popular as well.
If the repairs to the dam pose a problem downstream, I suppose the fishermen and women along the now more-exposed banks will just ride out the waves to Nashville and beyond.
Is this better than arguing over orthography?
(For some reason, this idea of fishermen and women riding the waves set loose by the failing of the Wolf Creek Dam brings to mind visions of Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb towards the end of the movie Doctor Strangelove).
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