Why South Carolina needs to improve dam safety

Oct. 4 will mark a somber anniversary: Communities across South Carolina were devastated by flooding that now stands as the second most costly environmental disaster in the state’s history. Only Hurricane Hugo in 1989, when adjusted for inflation, exceeded the $12 billion cost of the October floods. Nineteen people died, an estimated 160,000 homes were damaged, and hundreds of roads and bridges were closed, many impacted by failing dams.

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Scoppe: Why we need a new dam law (it’s not the reason you think)

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An unprecedented one out of every 50 dams regulated by the state failed; several of them were known not to meet dam safety criteria and to be in need of repair even before the rains began. Hundreds of smaller, unregulated dams also failed.

South Carolina’s dam safety program is rated as the nation‘s second worst by FEMA, and while the 2017 state budget includes additional funding for the program and new staff will be added, nothing has been done to improve the law and regulations that govern the state’s ability to ensure public safety.

A bill introduced by House Speaker Jay Lucas in January (H.4565) would have made many of the needed improvements, but it died in the House Agricultural and Natural Resources Committee after attempts to substantially weaken it.

With catastrophic floods becoming all too frequent in the Southeast — Baton Rouge, Nashville, Houston and Atlanta as well as Charleston and Columbia have all had disastrous floods in the past decade — South Carolina needs to do more to prepare.

The common sense approach is to fix the state’s weak dam safety law by:

• Making it the responsibility of dam owners to inspect and maintain their dams.

• Requiring more frequent, detailed inspections of hazardous dams.

• Giving the S.C. Dam Safety Program authority to regulate hazardous dams regardless of their size.

• Addressing the impacts of urban development on dam safety.

As demonstrated by the House’s Sept. 8 dam safety hearing, South Carolina’s lawmakers have much work to do to prepare new legislation for the 2017 session that will lift the state from the bottom rung of the nation’s dam safety programs. It is clearly their responsibility to ensure that we are doing the best we possibly can to protect our citizens from floods and failing dams.

This story was originally published September 19, 2016 at 5:06 PM with the headline "Why South Carolina needs to improve dam safety."