West Texas Dams In Need Of Inspections

By ABC-7 I-Team Investigator Martin Bartlett

EL PASO – With the rainy season just weeks away, an ABC-7 I-Team Investigation has revealed that nearly half of the dams in Far West Texas haven’t been inspected in the last decade and many have never been inspected at all.

What’s more, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality says they just don’t have the money to hire more inspectors.

Jacob Stickle had a front-row seat for mother nature’s powerful display during “storm 2006.”

“I actually just watched all the water flow right down the street,” he said. “It just built up there — washing right down off the mountain.”

And it all ended up here — right behind his house in the Van Buren Dam.

It’s one of about 70 dams in El Paso, Hudspeth and Culberson Counties that the TCEQ keeps tabs on.

The I-team has learned it’s also one of almost twenty that has not gone uninspected for the last decade

“We do the best we can with what we have,” said Engineer Warren Samuelson, he’s in charge of the state’s dam safety program.

The TCEQ’s eight inspectors can’t get to the thousands of dams across the state as often as they’d like to, he said.

“At this point we were not aware of any dam that’s in imminent threat of failing,” he said.

But, the I-Team also learned that the Ft. Quitman Lake Dam near Sierra Blanca was last inspected in 1968; more than a dozen in our area have never been inspected.

“We look at what’s down stream, if there are houses downstream, then we have a risk,” Samuelson said.

Since there aren’t, he says that it’s a low-priority for the TCEQ and until there are more inspectors, many dams are likely to remain a low priority.

A bill that might have given the TCEQ more inspectors died during the last legislative session.