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IBWC official has ‘absolute faith’ in dam
Published September 25, 2008
Amistad Dam is not in danger from the increased amount of water flowing into Amistad Reservoir, an International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) official said Wednesday.
Benito Garcia, IBWC acting area operations manager, dispelled recurring rumors about the structure of Amistad Dam in an interview with the Del Rio News-Herald late Wednesday afternoon.
Garcia first addressed an email making the rounds on Del Rio computers.
The email purports to show photos of the Luis L. Leon Dam on the Rio Conchos in northern Chihuahua state in Mexico and warns that the Luis Leon Dam “is cracking with tons of water headed our way.”
Garcia Wednesday said none of the dams on the Rio Conchos, including the Luis Leon Dam, have failed.
The email also states, “National Parks is letting out lots of water in preparation for this water hitting us. As a quiet FYI/BTW (for you information/by the way), we have small cracks in our dam (Amistad) and you can hear the dam popping and snapping under the load of all the water we have been getting in the area. It sounds like someone is at the Border Patrol firing range shooting a big gun. . .But it’s not! If our dam (Amistad) broke like this one (Luis Leon) did, Del Rio and Acuña would be in a world of hurt.”
Garcia said Wednesday he has “absolute faith” in the structure of Amistad Dam and explained that the loud “popping” sounds heard around the dam are bird cannons mounted on the structure to discourage vultures from roosting.
Garcia said the bird cannons, which use a small butane tank to “create a little explosion,” discourage the roosting of hundreds of vultures, whose excretions create a mess on the dam and equipment and structures on it.
“It’s just a loud explosion to scare away the birds. It has nothing to do with the dam,” Garcia said.
Garcia added, “I don’t believe we have any problems with the structure. We’ve had some issues in the past with some sinkholes. They got filled in back in the ’90s. Even now, we’re monitoring the dam twice as much as we used to (because) we want to be a bit ahead of what’s coming up and be prepared.”
Garcia said among the tools used to ensure the integrity of the dam are measuring seepage because of the structure of the ground and keeping an eye on a stream that flows into the Rio Grande immediately downstream of the Mexico side of the dam.
“We monitor what the condition of the water (in that stream). If you got moving, flowing, clean, pretty water for years and years, and then all of a sudden you start seeing dirty water, then we have a concern. Wherever these streams are flowing, are they picking up some of the debris, some of the stuff that’s on the ground, and making a bigger void? But that’s not the case. We haven’t seen anything like that,” Garcia said.
Garcia said the surface elevation of the lake, which this morning stood at 1113.80 feet, has gone beyond the 1117-foot “conservation elevation” several times in its history, most notably on Sept. 22, 1974, when it reached 1135.66. That is the highest elevation the lake has ever reached since the reservoir was filled in 1968.
“. . .There is a conservation level and there is a super storage flood control level,” Garcia said. “These are levels that the dam is designed to hold. It is recommended that we kind of stay around here (conservation level). But from conservation level to super storage, we’re talking about 20-some feet of elevation, and when you spread that out over the miles of the lake, that’s an awful lot of water.
“We would not prefer to have it up there. We would prefer to have it over here in conservation, but as you can see, there have been years where it’s been way up above conservation,” he added.
This writer then asked Garcia, “So what we can tell our readers is that you have absolute faith in the structure of Amistad Dam?”
And Garcia replied, “Yes.”
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