Stimulus $ will repair old soil-conservation dams

The Department of Agriculture will use $50 million of federal stimulus money in 11 states to shore up soil-conservation dams that are reaching the end of their 50-year design lives, Julie Harker reports for Brownfield Network. "A lot of people that live in rural America don't even know that these dams are protecting them," David White, chief of USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, told Harker.

"White says metal rusts and concrete wears down over time and in many small, rural areas the dams protect the drinking water supply," Harker writes, adding that some of the impoundments are now surrounded by development, giving the dams a high-hazard classification and requiring work to meet higher safety standards. The $50 million will be spent on about 25 dams. White says about 1,700 of the 11,000 dams are high-hazard. White "says engineers are going to be assessing those watershed dams to see what needs to be done to fix them," Harker reports.