Story Leads for Journalists
DamLookup.com runs on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' National Inventory of Dams — 92,000+ dams, updated regularly. Below are 53 dams our data flagged worth a second look: rated high-hazard, with no Emergency Action Plan on file, and no visible coverage addressing them as of our last check. These are leads, not finished stories — verify locally, confirm nothing's changed since we checked, and watch for a similarly named dam nearby that isn't the one described here.
How this list is built
We filter the full public dataset to high-hazard dams with no filed Emergency Action Plan — the plan that's supposed to warn downstream residents if a dam is failing — then check each candidate against current news coverage before it's listed, using a mix of automated review and human judgment (including AI-assisted analysis) to drop anything stale, already addressed, or easily confused with a different dam nearby. A missing EAP is a regulatory and preparedness gap, not a prediction that a dam will fail — that process is a starting point, not a substitute for your own reporting.
Working an infrastructure or public-safety beat? Email me@byclaude.net and tell us your state or region — we'll dig for you.
Arizona
A 189-foot, 306,000-acre-foot tailings dam at ASARCO's Mission copper mine south of Tucson has no publicly recorded condition rating and no filed emergency warning plan despite a high-hazard rating -- the sharper story is less 'no EAP' and more 'regulators have never put a number on how sound this giant impoundment is.'
Exposure: Downslope toward the Green Valley/Sahuarita corridor and Santa Cruz River drainage south of Tucson; precise population-at-risk not confirmed by SERP and would need direct verification against inundation mapping.
Current status: condition_assessment is 'Not Available' (not merely unrated but literally missing), no EAP, no last-inspection date on file, and even year_completed reads 0 -- an unusual amount of missing public data for a dam this large, which is itself part of the story.
Coverage: SERP is almost entirely noise: national dam-database mirror pages and a generic AZ dam-safety portal page, plus an irrelevant Glen Canyon Dam hit. Two hits are genuine name-collision traps -- 'Chino Mines Reservoir No. 7 Dam' in Grant County, NM, and 'Sunridge Canyon (No. 7)' in Maricopa County, AZ -- both different dams; any pitch must specify 'ASARCO Mission tailings dam, Pima County' by name/NID ID to avoid conflation. No coverage found addressing this specific facility's safety status.
View full record & inspection history →Connecticut
A 126-year-old, Poor-condition private dam on the Mad River in Waterbury has had no safety inspection since 2012 and no emergency warning plan on file, despite being rated high-hazard for a city of over 100,000.
Exposure: Waterbury's Mad River corridor -- residential and industrial areas along the river within a city of roughly 107,000.
Current status: Poor condition assessment, last inspected 11/20/2012 (roughly 13-14 years stale as of 2026), no EAP, privately owned by an individual (DeAngelis) -- every neglect signal present at once.
Coverage: SERP confirms the dam is a real, known local landmark (a local-history blog, Wikipedia's Mad River (Connecticut) entry, a regional council of governments page, paddling/recreation listings) with no indication it has been repaired or reassessed since 2012. One hit -- a 'Mad River State Recreation Area' page tied to the Town of Winchester -- refers to a different Mad River location in a different CT town and should not be conflated with this Waterbury dam.
View full record & inspection history →Delaware
The City of Wilmington's own Porter Reservoir Dam, tied to its historic Porter Filter Plant drinking-water works, hasn't been inspected in 25 years and has no emergency warning plan on file despite a high-hazard rating -- a public utility that hasn't checked on its own high-hazard dam since 2000.
Exposure: Downstream neighborhoods along Matson Run within Wilmington city limits; the dam is small (12 ft) but rated high-hazard, meaning consequence-of-failure rather than scale drives the classification.
Current status: Fair condition, but last_inspection_date is 10/16/2000 -- by far the stalest inspection date in this batch (roughly a quarter-century) -- and still no EAP. Owned outright by the City of Wilmington (Local Government), not a private party.
Coverage: SERP confirms Porter Reservoir/Filter Plant is real, active Wilmington water infrastructure (city water-department facilities page, a historic-architecture entry for the Porter Rapid Sand Filter Plant, a university weather-station listing, recreational fishing/paddling references). Nothing found suggests a more recent inspection or a filed EAP since 2000.
View full record & inspection history →Florida
A privately owned irrigation dam near Lake City, Florida is rated 'Unsatisfactory' -- the worst possible condition grade -- hasn't been inspected since 2014, and has no emergency warning plan; SERP shows the same individual owner has at least one other dam (L.P. Hill Dam #1) in the registry, suggesting a pattern worth asking the owner about directly.
Exposure: Residents and property around Alligator Lake and its tributary near Lake City, Columbia County (city population roughly 12,000).
Current status: Unsatisfactory condition (the lowest rating tier), last inspected 11/05/2014 (about 12 years stale), no EAP, owned by a named individual (Leonard P. Hill) rather than a company or agency -- an identifiable, reachable owner.
Coverage: SERP confirms the dam and its reservoir are a known local recreation feature (paddling-spot listings, an Alligator Lake tributary) and that it's on Florida's official high/significant-hazard dam list. A 'Horton Dam' hit from the same registry is ambiguous -- unclear if it's an alternate/prior name for this structure or a separate nearby dam -- and should be checked, not assumed either way, before publication.
View full record & inspection history →A private phosphate-tailings dam near the abandoned company town of Nichols in Florida's phosphate district hasn't had a condition rating filed in over a decade and has no emergency warning plan -- in a region with a documented history of tailings-related environmental crises, the sharper hook is the missing condition rating on a 250-acre impoundment, not just the missing EAP.
Exposure: Nichols itself is largely abandoned, so on-site population is minimal; real exposure runs downstream along the Alafia River toward Mulberry and, further, the more populated Riverview/Gibsonton corridor toward Tampa Bay -- this chain needs direct hydrology confirmation before naming specific downstream communities in print.
Current status: condition_assessment is 'Not Rated' (never formally rated, not merely stale), last inspection 10/16/2014 (about 12 years stale), no EAP. Owned by ALAFIA LLC -- name strongly suggests ties to the Alafia River, a real waterway running through the Tampa Bay phosphate belt toward more populated areas downstream.
Coverage: SERP confirms 'Nichols' is a real, documented ghost town in the Polk County phosphate district, and that this dam sits on Florida's official state hazard-potential dam list. Several hits are false-positive name collisions and should be discarded -- 'Nichols and McClure Reservoirs' and a '$17 million repairs' story both reference Santa Fe, New Mexico, an unrelated place. No SERP evidence this specific dam has been rated or repaired since 2014.
View full record & inspection history →Georgia
A Poor-condition flood-control dam owned by a public soil-and-water conservation district, upstream of fast-growing Cherokee County, Georgia, has no emergency warning plan -- but Georgia's 'Little River' watershed program numbers dozens of near-identical small dams (Str #17, #21, #26, and more), so any pitch has to nail down 'Structure #21' specifically to avoid muddling it with its siblings.
Exposure: Suburban Cherokee County development downstream along the Little River, in one of metro Atlanta's fastest-growing exurban counties (~260,000 residents county-wide).
Current status: Poor condition, last inspected 05/07/2019 (about 7 years stale -- less severe than several others in this batch but still no EAP filed), owned by the Limestone Valley Soil and Water Conservation District, a public body.
Coverage: SERP is dominated by sibling structures from the same nationwide small-watershed dam program -- 'Little River WS Str #17' (also Cherokee County), 'South Fork Little River WS Str #26' (Greene County), plus unrelated nearby dams (Lacy Lake, Sandridge Lake) in Cherokee County, and a separate 'Little River Dam and Reservoir' engineering-firm page that may describe an entirely different, larger structure. None of this confirms or refutes Str #21's current status specifically -- it just underscores how easily this dam's identity could be conflated with a neighbor.
View full record & inspection history →A Poor-condition flood-control dam owned by Fulton County's own soil and water conservation district sits with no emergency warning plan just upstream of dense, affluent north Fulton development around Alpharetta -- but Georgia has multiple similarly numbered 'Little River Watershed' structures, so the pitch must specify 'Structure No. 35' precisely.
Exposure: Dense suburban north Fulton County / Alpharetta development downstream along the Little River.
Current status: Poor condition, last inspected 06/14/2017 (about 9 years stale), no EAP, owned by the Fulton County Soil & Water Conservation District -- a public body, not a private owner.
Coverage: SERP is dominated by sibling structures in the same nationwide small-watershed dam program -- 'Little River Sub Watershed Structure No. 19' (Cherokee County, appearing twice), 'South Fork Little River WS Str #26' (Greene County), and an entirely unrelated 'Little River Watershed Site M-1' in Decatur County, Iowa -- none of which describe this dam. A Georgia Tech watershed-assessment report and an NRCS program page provide legitimate background but don't confirm this structure's current status specifically.
View full record & inspection history →Columbus, Georgia's own consolidated city government owns a high-hazard flood-control dam on Flatrock Creek with no emergency warning plan on file -- but because the dam's last inspection rated it 'Satisfactory,' the honest story is a pure paperwork/accountability gap (the city hasn't filed the state-required plan for its own dam), not a disrepair story -- and a city council resolution plus an active rehab project on a nearby sibling dam both need checking before assuming nothing is already in motion.
Exposure: City of Columbus, GA neighborhoods along Flatrock Creek downstream of the dam, within a metro area of roughly 200,000.
Current status: Condition assessment is Satisfactory -- notably better than most of this batch -- last inspected 02/01/2017 (about 9 years stale), still no EAP. Because the structure itself isn't flagged as deteriorated, the gap is specifically administrative: the EAP was never filed.
Coverage: SERP confirms the dam and watershed are real and actively discussed (a Bull Creek watershed-management feature, a live USGS gauge on Bull Creek near Columbus), but two hits complicate a clean 'nothing being done' framing: a 'Bull Creek Dam No. 12 Rehabilitation Project' shows at least one sibling structure in the same watershed system is getting active investment, and a Columbus Consolidated Government resolution document (title alone doesn't confirm subject matter) may or may not bear directly on Bull Creek dam safety -- both should be read in full before the pitch goes out. 'Bull Creek WS Str #14' and 'Etowah River WS Str #25' are unrelated sibling/coincidental-number dams, not this one.
View full record & inspection history →A Poor-condition, privately owned recreational dam next to the Norris Lake residential community outside Atlanta has no emergency warning plan -- but the record's DeKalb County listing conflicts with SERP evidence tying 'Norris Lake' to Snellville in neighboring Gwinnett County, so the exact jurisdiction needs nailing down before publication, and this small Georgia dam must not be confused with the far more famous Norris Dam/Lake in Tennessee.
Exposure: Homes and residents of the Norris Lake residential community; precise county (DeKalb vs. Gwinnett) needs confirmation.
Current status: Poor condition, no EAP, but the last inspection (01/07/2021) is comparatively recent -- about 5 years stale rather than a decade-plus like several other dams in this batch -- so the 'stale inspection' angle is weaker here even though the condition grade itself is bad.
Coverage: SERP repeatedly ties 'Norris Lake' to Snellville, Georgia and to Gwinnett County (a homes-for-sale listing, a r/Gwinnett community thread) rather than DeKalb County as the record states -- this discrepancy needs resolving before naming a county in print. Separately, two hits ('Norris Dam,' a TN-history site, and a Friends of Norris Lake group) are about the well-known TVA Norris Dam and Norris Lake in Tennessee -- a completely different dam and state -- and must be explicitly distinguished from this small private Georgia dam.
View full record & inspection history →DeKalb County's own Roads & Drainage department owns a Poor-condition, High-hazard dam holding back a small recreational lake near Mystery Valley Golf Course — with no state-recognized emergency action plan on file to warn anyone downstream if it were to fail.
Exposure: Golf-course grounds and any homes/roads immediately below the small lake in suburban DeKalb County, metro Atlanta — modest scale relative to other candidates in this batch.
Current status: NID record shows Poor condition assessment and no EAP as of the most recent inspection (Jan 2021, now 4+ years stale); a small (200 acre-ft, 24-ft) earthen dam owned by a county government department.
Coverage: SERP is mostly aggregator mirrors of the same NID record (data.starnewsonline.com/data.knoxnews.com) plus fishing/golf-course content tied to the adjacent Mystery Valley Golf Course; no independent reporting on the dam's condition found. One hit ('Houseworth Lake Dam') is a DIFFERENT DeKalb County dam — don't conflate the two.
View full record & inspection history →Indiana
A private individual owner has let inspection lapse for over a decade (last inspection 2011) on a Poor-condition, High-hazard dam that impounds the lake at the center of the upscale Doubletree Lake Estates subdivision near Winfield, in Chicago-adjacent Lake County, Indiana — and no emergency warning plan is on file.
Exposure: Homes and residents of the Doubletree Lake Estates subdivision plus the unnamed tributary of the Deep River downstream, in developed Lake County, IN (Gary/Chicago suburbs).
Current status: Record shows Poor condition, last inspected 02/14/2011 (14+ years stale as of this snapshot), no EAP; private owner listed as an individual, 'Dave Lasco.' Year-completed and normal-storage fields are blank/zero, suggesting incomplete NID data alongside the safety gaps.
Coverage: SERP confirms this is the amenity lake for the Doubletree Lake Estates residential development (HOA site, real-estate listings, subdivision site) — no independent news coverage of the dam's safety status found; the owner name should be re-verified as current before publication since NID ownership records can go stale.
View full record & inspection history →A 57-foot dam owned by a named private individual (Michael Ortwein) in Dearborn County, Indiana — near Cincinnati, on the Ohio River side of the state, NOT Dearborn, Michigan — has never received a formal condition rating and shows no evidence of a genuine recent inspection, on top of having no emergency action plan.
Exposure: Uncertain from available data — likely a rural stretch of Dearborn County, IN near the Ohio River valley; specific downstream structures/residents aren't identifiable from the SERP, and the record's storage/area fields are blank.
Current status: Condition is 'Not Rated' (never assessed by the state — arguably a starker gap than 'Poor'), no EAP, and a last-inspection date of 01/01/2000 that reads like a placeholder/default value rather than a real inspection date — confirm with Indiana's dam safety program before citing it as fact. Storage/surface-area fields are all zero, most likely reflecting missing NID data rather than a genuinely empty reservoir; also needs confirmation.
Coverage: SERP is overwhelmingly about Dearborn, MICHIGAN (Henry Ford's Fair Lane Estate, the Rouge River dam, University of Michigan-Dearborn) — a same-name-different-place mismatch, not this dam. Only dearborncounty.org (the actual Indiana county) and a Cincinnati.com data-mirror page are on-topic; no independent reporting on this specific dam was found. A pitch must anchor explicitly to Dearborn County, Indiana to avoid the mix-up.
View full record & inspection history →Kentucky
A 412-foot coal-slurry impoundment owned by McCoy Elkhorn Coal Corp — larger by storage volume than the impoundment behind the infamous 2000 Martin County, KY/WV slurry spill — has no publicly listed condition rating, no recorded inspection date, and no state EAP on file; the honest story is the near-total public opacity around a structure of this scale, not a prediction that it will fail, and the 'no EAP' framing needs a caveat since coal-slurry impoundments like this are typically also subject to a separate MSHA mine-safety regulatory track.
Exposure: Blackburn Bottom and the Tug Fork valley communities in Pike County, KY, per the record's location — downstream population/structures not independently confirmed via SERP.
Current status: Condition is 'Not Available' (unrated/unknown to the public database, not merely 'poor'), no inspection date recorded at all, no EAP, year-completed unknown; max storage of 10,763 acre-feet is very large for this dam type.
Coverage: Every SERP hit is about a DIFFERENT, historically famous incident — the 2000 Martin County, KY coal slurry spill and the separately named 'Big Branch Slurry Impoundment' — not Big Groundhog itself. No coverage of this specific impoundment was found; that absence is itself part of the story, but a reporter must be careful not to conflate Big Groundhog with Martin County or Big Branch. Also flag: as a coal-mine tailings structure, MSHA likely has a regulatory role here alongside (or instead of) the state dam-safety program, so 'no EAP' should be framed as 'no EAP in the public NID/dam-safety sense,' not 'no oversight of any kind.'
View full record & inspection history →Maryland
Baltimore City's own Department of Public Works rates its 175-foot Liberty Dam — the structure holding back the 177,000-acre-foot Liberty Reservoir, a core water supply for the Baltimore metro area — as 'Unsatisfactory,' the worst NID condition tier, and has no emergency action plan on file, a status reconfirmed by an inspection as recent as May 2024.
Exposure: The Baltimore metropolitan water-supply system and the Patapsco River valley downstream of the reservoir — one of the largest-exposure candidates in this batch.
Current status: Condition 'Unsatisfactory' and no EAP, with a recent (05/22/2024) inspection date — meaning this is a current, not stale, finding, on a major, high-consequence structure (175 ft, 177,000 acre-ft) owned and operated by the city itself.
Coverage: SERP confirms Liberty Dam/Reservoir is well-known recreationally (hiking trails, birding). One hit, 'Last major dam on Patapsco River targeted for removal,' almost certainly refers to a different, smaller/obsolete downstream structure on the Patapsco mainstem (which has seen removals like Bloede Dam) — NOT the large active Liberty Reservoir dam, which remains a critical water-supply asset; do not conflate the two. 'Daniels Dam' (dnr.maryland.gov) likewise appears to be a distinct, separate structure near the historic Daniels, MD site — worth confirming as a separate entity before writing.
View full record & inspection history →The homeowners' association that owns the dam behind Lake Linganore — the amenity lake for one of Frederick County's largest planned residential communities — has an 'Unsatisfactory'-rated, High-hazard dam with no emergency action plan on file, a rating reconfirmed by a January 2024 inspection.
Exposure: The Lake Linganore residential community (a large planned development with thousands of residents) and Linganore Creek downstream, in Frederick County, MD.
Current status: Condition 'Unsatisfactory,' no EAP, inspection as recent as 01/29/2024 (current, not stale); owned by the Lake Linganore Association (a private HOA), a 63-ft dam impounding 7,900 acre-feet at full pool.
Coverage: SERP includes coverage of a fatal water incident ('1 dead, 8 rescued from water at Lake Linganore') and a water-quality/pollution story ('uphill pollution battle') at the same lake — these read as swimming/drowning and algae/water-quality issues, NOT dam-structural or EAP-related incidents, and should not be conflated with the dam-safety finding in any pitch. The lake and its HOA governance already draw some local press attention, which may help sourcing.
View full record & inspection history →The City of Frederick's own century-old water-supply dam on Fishing Creek is rated 'Unsatisfactory' — confirmed by an inspection as recent as October 2024 — and has no emergency action plan on file, despite being classified as capable of causing loss of life if it failed.
Exposure: City of Frederick / Frederick County, MD water-supply customers and residents along Fishing Creek downstream of the reservoir.
Current status: Condition 'Unsatisfactory,' no EAP, recent inspection (10/23/2024) confirms currency; dam built 1925, owned by the City of Frederick.
Coverage: A City of Frederick web page titled 'Fishing Creek Dam and Reservoir Improvements' turned up in the SERP — suggesting the city may already have some improvement or remediation effort underway. The title/domain snippet alone doesn't say whether that project addresses the condition rating or the missing EAP specifically (it could be about water-treatment capacity rather than dam safety), so a reporter should check that page's actual scope and timeline before framing this as an unaddressed gap.
View full record & inspection history →A 145-year-old, city-owned reservoir dam in the middle of Baltimore -- rated High hazard and inspected as recently as Nov. 2024 -- still has no filed emergency action plan telling nearby residents how they'd be warned if it failed.
Exposure: Dense Baltimore City rowhouse neighborhoods along Herring Run below the reservoir (offstream storage tempers but doesn't eliminate downstream flow risk).
Current status: Fair condition, inspected 11/21/2024 (recent), so the dam itself is being watched -- the gap is specifically the missing warning/notification plan, not evidence of physical deterioration.
Coverage: SERP is dominated by recreational/historical coverage (Wikipedia, Baltimore's water-system history, hiking/Instagram/Yelp posts) -- no news coverage found addressing dam-safety or EAP status specifically. Treat the absence of coverage as a visibility gap, not confirmation the issue is being handled elsewhere.
View full record & inspection history →Montgomery County has publicly acknowledged and is actively engineering a fix for this Poor-condition flood-control dam's overtopping risk -- but even with a capital project and public meetings underway, the county still hasn't filed the emergency warning plan that would tell Silver Spring residents downstream what to do if the dam fails first.
Exposure: Dense Silver Spring neighborhoods along Sligo Creek downstream of the pond.
Current status: SERP shows an active, named 'Wheaton Branch Dam Overtopping' capital project with county government pages and a public-meeting video -- this is a known, actively managed dam, not an ignored one. That project addresses physical capacity, a different fix than an EAP; the record shows no EAP filed and the SERP doesn't confirm one has been added since.
Coverage: Real, specific existing coverage found (montgomerycountymd.gov project pages, public-meeting video). Recast away from a 'neglect' frame and toward the irony of physical remediation proceeding without a warning plan; a reporter should confirm current project status and ask the county directly whether an EAP is now filed or planned.
View full record & inspection history →A private watershed association's Unsatisfactory-rated, High-hazard flood-control dam on Gilbert Run in Charles County has no EAP recorded in the federal dam database — but Charles County appears to maintain its own 'Gilbert Run Watershed Dams Hazard Specific Plan,' so before pitching this as an emergency-planning void, a reporter needs to confirm whether that county document already functions as (or supersedes) the missing federal EAP.
Exposure: Gilbert Run Park and surrounding suburban Charles County, MD (between Waldorf and the Potomac) downstream of the dam.
Current status: Condition 'Unsatisfactory,' no EAP in NID, inspection as recent as 02/27/2024; owned by the Gilbert Run Watershed Association (private), a 37-ft, 950-ft-long earthen flood-control dam.
Coverage: Charles County's own site lists a 'Gilbert Run Watershed – Dams Hazard Specific Plan (HSP)' and an 'Operation, Maintenance, and Inspection Manual' for this exact watershed — direct evidence of some level of active local planning/management that could meaningfully complicate (or soften) the 'no emergency plan' framing. This needs to be read and checked before the accountability angle is used as-is; if the HSP genuinely covers emergency notification, the sharper story may be a federal/local reporting mismatch rather than an actual planning void.
View full record & inspection history →A private sand-and-gravel company's Unsatisfactory-rated tailings dam near Beltsville — in densely populated Prince George's County — has no emergency action plan on file, a status reconfirmed by an inspection as recent as August 2024.
Exposure: Beltsville-area residents and structures along Indian Creek in Prince George's County, MD, immediately downstream of the pond — a modest-scale impoundment relative to others in this batch.
Current status: Condition 'Unsatisfactory,' no EAP, inspection as recent as 08/14/2024 (current); owned by Laurel Sand and Gravel, Inc. Storage is comparatively small (55 acre-feet max, 2.2-acre surface) even though the dam itself is a substantial 41-ft, 900-ft earthen structure — downstream stakes, while real (High hazard classification implies expected loss of life), are more localized than the batch's larger reservoirs.
Coverage: SERP is mostly unrelated noise — an old DTIC technical report, generic NID data mirrors, a different nearby stormwater pond ('Bowie Gateway Swm Pond Dam'), and several Conowingo Dam articles about a completely different, much larger hydroelectric dam on the Susquehanna River that must not be conflated with this small tailings pond. No independent reporting on this specific dam was found. As a mining-company-owned tailings impoundment, MSHA may have some regulatory role alongside Maryland's state dam-safety program (MDE, also appearing in SERP only as a generic program-level hit, not dam-specific).
View full record & inspection history →Mississippi
Local news has already reported water coming over and through this county-owned dam, and Mississippi's environmental regulator held a public meeting about it -- yet the dam, rated High hazard and Unsatisfactory, still has no emergency action plan telling the residents who live on Robins Lake Road what to do if it fails.
Exposure: Homes directly on and along Robins Lake Road, Natchez, Adams County, downstream of the dam on Robins Bayou.
Current status: Unsatisfactory condition, no EAP, inspected 02/28/2023. This is the strongest evidentiary case in the batch: not just a paper rating -- an actual overtopping/seepage event was reported by name, and a state agency (MDEQ) has already convened a public meeting specifically about this dam.
Coverage: Confirmed real, specific local coverage: 'Water coming over and through dam on Robins Lake Road' (natchezdemocrat.com) and an MDEQ meeting notice naming Robins Lake Dam specifically -- plus community Facebook discussion and real-estate listings confirming homes sit directly on Robins Lake Road. A reporter should determine the date of the MDEQ meeting and what, if anything, came of it, since the SERP doesn't show the outcome.
View full record & inspection history →A privately owned, 25-foot earthen dam near Vicksburg rated in 'Unsatisfactory' condition and classified as capable of causing loss of life if it fails has had no emergency action plan on file even after a February 2023 inspection -- why hasn't Mississippi required one from its sole private owner?
Exposure: Properties along the unnamed tributary of Redbone Creek in Warren County near Vicksburg; small pool (125 acre-ft max) but High hazard classification means loss of life is plausible if it fails.
Current status: Inspected as recently as Feb 2023 and rated Unsatisfactory (NID's worst condition tier), still with no EAP at that point -- a live, current gap, not stale data.
Coverage: SERP returned zero hits on this specific dam -- every result is about unrelated USACE Vicksburg District projects (Arkabutla Dam, Overton Lock, highwater events). No evidence this dam's status has ever been reported on; relying on the structured record alone here.
View full record & inspection history →A small, family-owned dam near Bolton -- rated Unsatisfactory with no emergency action plan -- has drawn zero public attention, in part because online searches for its name surface a famous blues musician from the same town instead of the dam itself.
Exposure: Rural residents along Bakers Creek near Bolton, Hinds County.
Current status: Unsatisfactory condition, no EAP, inspected 03/21/2023 (recent). Modest scale (19 ft height, ~122 acre-ft max storage) compared to others in this batch, but still High hazard and privately held by two individuals.
Coverage: IMPORTANT DISAMBIGUATION: nearly all SERP results concern Walter Vinson, the Mississippi Sheiks blues guitarist born in Bolton, MS -- an unrelated namesake -- not the dam. No coverage of the dam itself was found. This is genuinely uncovered territory, but a reporter needs to make clear up front that the piece isn't about the musician.
View full record & inspection history →Missouri
The vacation resort that owned this Unsatisfactory-rated, high-hazard dam holding back over 500 acre-feet of water appears to have closed -- raising the question of who, if anyone, is now responsible for a dam with no filed warning plan and no inspection in seven years.
Exposure: De Soto and surrounding Jefferson County residents along McMullen Branch downstream of a lake covering nearly 34 acres.
Current status: Unsatisfactory condition, no EAP, last inspected 04/29/2019 (~7 years stale). Owner of record is Silverleaf Resorts LLC; SERP signals ('Former Timber Creek Resort' commercial listing, and a Facebook post saying the resort 'is closing') suggest the operating business may be defunct or the property vacant -- this is directional, not confirmed, and a reporter needs to verify current ownership/receivership status before running an 'orphaned dam' framing.
Coverage: No dam-safety-specific news coverage found; the relevant signals concern the resort's business status (closure/'former'), not the dam itself. One unrelated dam ('Summer Set Lake Dam') appeared in the SERP as noise and should not be conflated with this one.
View full record & inspection history →A private homeowners' association in a Blue Springs subdivision owns a 44-foot, Unsatisfactory-rated dam with no emergency action plan and no inspection date on file at all -- a small, thinly resourced HOA is the last line of accountability for a dam rated to kill people downstream if it fails.
Exposure: Homes within the Lake Side at Chapman Homes subdivision along the West Fork Sni-A-Bar tributary, Blue Springs, Jackson County.
Current status: Worst NID condition rating (Unsatisfactory) stacked with no EAP and a blank last-inspection-date field -- one of the most complete 'nobody's watching this' signatures in the batch.
Coverage: IMPORTANT DISAMBIGUATION: nearly all SERP results are about the much larger, unrelated Blue Springs Lake/Lake Jacomo -- a well-documented USACE flood-control reservoir and popular public park -- not this small, privately owned 5.6-acre HOA pond called 'Lakeside Lake' at Chapman Homes. No coverage of this specific dam was found; a reporter must be careful to name and locate the correct, much smaller HOA-owned dam, not the well-known public lake.
View full record & inspection history →An 85-foot mine-tailings impoundment in Missouri's old Lead Belt, owned by a private individual, was rated Unsatisfactory and hasn't been inspected since 2006 -- nearly two decades of silence on a dam that could kill people if it fails, whichever agency is actually supposed to be watching it.
Exposure: Rural residents along Mine A Breton Creek in the Cruise/Washington County area downstream of the impoundment.
Current status: Unsatisfactory condition, no EAP, last inspection 08/22/2006 -- roughly 19 years stale. As a tailings dam, oversight may fall to mine-safety regulators rather than a state dam-safety office, so 'no EAP' may reflect a jurisdictional gap rather than simple neglect by one accountable body -- that jurisdictional question is itself the sharper angle here.
Coverage: SERP returned almost entirely irrelevant results (Lake of the Ozarks and other unrelated boat-'cruise' content, triggered by the city name CRUISE, MO) plus a likely-different 'Gun Club Lake' in Minnesota (lowermnriverwd.org). No confirmed news coverage of this specific dam was found -- treat as absence of visibility, not evidence the dam is fine, and disambiguate explicitly from the Minnesota lake of the same name.
View full record & inspection history →The Columbia Missourian has already reported that little is known about the safety of Boone County's privately owned dams -- Gladstone Lake Dam, owned by two families and rated Unsatisfactory with no EAP and no inspection date on file, is a specific, nameable example a follow-up story could point to directly.
Exposure: Residents along Slacks Branch near Columbia, Boone County.
Current status: Unsatisfactory condition, no EAP, no last-inspection-date -- consistent with the general problem the Missourian piece describes, but this record alone doesn't confirm whether that article named this dam specifically.
Coverage: SERP surfaces an existing, directly on-topic investigative piece -- 'Little is known about safety of private Boone County dams' (columbiamissourian.com) -- meaning this exact accountability angle has already been reported at the county level. A new pitch should build on or update that piece (has anything changed since it ran? was Gladstone one of the dams it covered?) rather than presenting the general problem as undiscovered. Also note a similarly-named but distinct 'Lake Cyrene Dam,' also in Boone County, appeared in the SERP -- don't conflate the two.
View full record & inspection history →New Mexico
A 1957 flood-control dam owned by the Caballo Soil & Water Conservation District, west of Hatch, NM's chile-farming valley, is rated Poor and high-hazard, hasn't been inspected since 2020, and has no emergency action plan -- with the record itself naming 'unincorporated residents west of the dam' as the exposed population; a 2011 state legislative 'Deficient Dams' spreadsheet turned up in search and is worth confirming as possibly documenting this same unresolved problem for over a decade.
Exposure: NID record explicitly names 'unincorporated residents west of the dam' in the Hatch Valley, a well-known agricultural (chile-growing) community in Doña Ana County.
Current status: Poor condition (second-worst NID rating), no EAP, inspection stale since Feb 2020 (~6 years). A 2011 nmlegis.gov 'Deficient Dams' spreadsheet is a plausible lead that this dam has been flagged for 15 years, but that needs confirming by opening the actual document, not assumed from the filename alone.
Coverage: This dam is part of a numbered series of similar flood-control structures in the same district -- Hatch Valley Arroyo Dam No. 1, Caballo Arroyo Dam No. 5, and Apodaca Arroyo Dam all surface in the same search and must not be conflated with No. 6. A USACE 'Hatch, New Mexico (Section 205)' flood study and an NM Dept. of Homeland Security & Emergency Management document also appeared and may contain directly relevant technical detail on this system.
View full record & inspection history →The City of Raton's 110-foot, 1914-built water-supply dam at Lake Maloya -- a popular Sugarite Canyon State Park destination with trails, camping, and boat traffic right at the reservoir -- is rated Poor, hasn't been inspected since 2017, and has no emergency action plan, despite holding back nearly 3,700 acre-feet of water above a town of roughly 7,000 people.
Exposure: City of Raton's water supply, plus the recreating public at Sugarite Canyon State Park directly on the reservoir, and residents along Chicorica Creek downstream.
Current status: Poor condition, no EAP, inspection nearly a decade stale (05/24/2017). One of the largest reservoirs in this batch by storage volume (5,030 acre-ft max / 3,690 acre-ft normal).
Coverage: Every SERP hit is recreation/tourism content about Lake Maloya and Sugarite Canyon State Park (Wikipedia, AllTrails, TripAdvisor, birding, local history) -- zero coverage of dam safety or condition found, suggesting a well-visited public destination whose dam-safety profile has gotten no press attention at all. Distinct from Cimarroncito Dam, a separate dam in the same county that surfaces in the same searches.
View full record & inspection history →The City of Alamogordo's water-supply dam at Bonito Lake -- a 113-foot, 1930-built structure already well known locally for its post-wildfire sedimentation crisis -- still has no emergency action plan on file as of a 2019 inspection, a gap that's gone unmentioned amid all the public attention paid to the lake's water-quality problems.
Exposure: City of Alamogordo (~31,000 residents) relies on this reservoir for water supply; Rio Bonito valley residents also sit downstream of the dam itself.
Current status: Condition rated Fair; last inspection 04/30/2019 (~7 years stale). The 'max storage' field reads 0.0 (likely missing data) while normal storage of 1,230 acre-ft is populated -- don't cite a 'zero capacity' figure.
Coverage: Bonito Lake itself is well covered publicly (tourism sites, Alamogordo Utilities FAQ pages, an NMDGF reopening notice, a USACE environmental assessment) -- almost certainly tied to the lake's known post-2012-wildfire sediment/closure saga, which was about water quality and recreation access, not dam-safety/EAP status specifically. No coverage found addressing the EAP gap itself.
View full record & inspection history →The City of Las Vegas, NM has owned a 115-year-old arch dam on the Gallinas River since 1911 -- a structure the state's own record says endangers 'unincorporated residents downstream' -- and it still has no emergency action plan on file as of a 2020 inspection; worth checking whether this exact dam is named in the NM Legislature's own 'Northeastern New Mexico Dams' report on the state's high-hazard backlog.
Exposure: NID record explicitly names 'unincorporated residents downstream of dam' on the Gallinas River near Las Vegas, NM.
Current status: Condition is rated 'Fair' (not the worst tier), and last inspection was 2020 -- moderately stale but not decades-old. The no-EAP gap sits on an otherwise middling, not alarming, condition rating -- don't overstate the dam's physical state.
Coverage: No article specifically naming Peterson Dam surfaced, but New Mexico's high-hazard-dam problem has real statewide press coverage ('New Mexico leads US with high-hazard dams in poor shape,' lcsun-news.com) and a state legislative report on NE New Mexico dams -- worth pulling to check if this dam is named there. Distinct from Conchas Dam, a much larger dam also in San Miguel County that surfaces in the same searches.
View full record & inspection history →The City of Truth or Consequences owns a 35-foot flood-control dam built in 1960 that's rated Poor, hasn't been inspected since 2019, and has no emergency action plan -- meaning if it fails, it would most likely be during the very kind of major storm it was built to hold back.
Exposure: Residents of Truth or Consequences (pop. ~6,000) below the dam on a Rio Grande tributary, primarily at risk during major storm/flood events rather than from a standing reservoir.
Current status: This is a Flood Risk Reduction structure with both max and normal storage listed as 0.0 acre-ft, consistent with a normally-dry flood-control basin rather than a year-round reservoir -- the honest failure scenario is 'fails during a flood event,' not 'holds back a standing lake that could burst.' Condition Poor, no EAP, inspection stale since 03/18/2019.
Coverage: SERP is almost entirely Truth or Consequences tourism content (hot springs, Wikipedia, city site, travel guides) with no coverage of this dam's safety status. A different dam, 'T or C Site 8c Dam,' also in Sierra County, surfaced and should not be conflated with St. Anne's Dam.
View full record & inspection history →North Carolina
A dam on the Horsepasture River serving the Fairfield Development in Jackson County was inspected as recently as February 2025 and still rated Unsatisfactory and high-hazard with no emergency plan on file -- a live gap, not a stale one -- but the NID record has no height, length, or storage figures logged at all, so a reporter needs actual dimensions from NC dam safety and should confirm whether this is the structure locally known as 'Fairfield Lake Dam.'
Exposure: Residents/property owners within the Fairfield Development resort community and along the Horsepasture River downstream, Jackson County.
Current status: Feb 2025 inspection is very recent (not a stale-data story) yet Unsatisfactory/no-EAP status persisted through it -- the strongest 'still true today' hook in this batch, paired with essentially no physical specs in the record itself (height/length/storage/surface area all read 0.0).
Coverage: SERP is mostly noise: an unrelated real-estate firm ('Connelly Builders'), an unrelated apartment company ('Fairfield Residential'), and generic NID-mirror listings. One hit, 'Fairfield Lake Dam in Jackson County, NC,' may describe this same dam under its common local name within the Fairfield Sapphire Valley resort community -- needs confirmation, not assumption.
View full record & inspection history →A private sawmill company's dam with a listed maximum capacity over 2,400 acre-feet is rated Unsatisfactory and high-hazard with no emergency action plan -- but the record's own height field is blank, so a reporter needs NC dam safety's real specs before describing the structure, and should confirm this is 'Old Mill Lake Dam' and not the nearby, similarly-named 'Old Mill Pond' or 'Poplar Lake Dam' also indexed in the same county.
Exposure: Rural properties along Gunpowder Creek in Caldwell County; no named town in the record, though county seat Lenoir is nearby.
Current status: Unsatisfactory condition + High hazard + no EAP as of the 12/08/2022 inspection, but height reads 0.0 (almost certainly missing data, not a true zero) and normal storage also reads 0.0 against a 2,415 acre-ft max -- an internal inconsistency to resolve with the state before citing any dimensions.
Coverage: SERP hits are dominated by generic NID-mirror database pages and unrelated same-name results (an Old Mill Dam at the Willa Cather Center in Nebraska, an old cotton mill near Falls Lake in Raleigh). No independent news coverage found. A neighboring 'Poplar Lake Dam' and an 'Old Mill Pond' topo listing both surface in the same county -- real disambiguation risk.
View full record & inspection history →Ohio
A coal company's 73-foot dam near Hagan Addition, Ohio has never received a condition rating and hasn't been inspected since 1983 -- over four decades -- and still has no emergency action plan for a structure classified as capable of killing people downstream if it fails; the state's own record shows nobody has formally looked at it since before most of its potential victims were born.
Exposure: Hagan Addition (small unincorporated community) and other Harrison County residents along the tributary to Sally Buffalo Creek, downstream of an aging coal-company impoundment.
Current status: Condition is 'Not Rated' -- meaning it has apparently never been formally assessed, a step beyond even 'Unsatisfactory.' Last inspection 08/12/1983 is by far the most stale record in this batch. Owner is Consol Mining Company LLC (a coal company); this is described as a raw-water/process-water supply dam, not a coal-refuse or tailings impoundment, so it plausibly still falls under Ohio's normal state dam-safety program rather than MSHA -- worth confirming directly with ODNR rather than assuming either way.
Coverage: SERP is heavily polluted by an unrelated 'Georgetown, Texas' city government and generic hydrology aggregators. Two real, relevant signals: sibling impoundments at the same industrial site ('Georgetown Plant Upper Supply Pond Dam,' 'Georgetown Upper Dam Number Two Pond') that must not be conflated with this specific 'Freshwater Dam,' and a USGS report on a low-head dam failure on 'White Oak Creek' that is very likely a different waterway/incident entirely and shouldn't be assumed related without checking.
View full record & inspection history →Pennsylvania
A 100-ft, mile-plus-long private earth dam holding 4,100 acre-feet for Reading Anthracite's Schuylkill County water-supply operations has no public condition rating and no filed warning plan -- ask the company and PA's dam-safety office why, but frame it precisely as the reservoir tied to this mining operation, not the abandoned coal-breaker building of a similar name that dominates search results and is a separate, well-documented urban-exploration subject.
Exposure: Unclear from available signals -- likely rural Schuylkill County land below a 100-ft, mile-plus-long earthen dam near Minersville; needs on-the-ground confirmation of what's actually downstream.
Current status: Record shows condition 'Not Available' (no inspection/rating on file), last_inspection_date blank, EAP 'No,' and year_completed listed as 0 (unknown) -- several blank/placeholder fields suggest thin recordkeeping as much as active neglect; can't confirm current physical condition from this data alone.
Coverage: Every SERP hit concerns the historic 'St. Nicholas'/'New St. Nicholas' coal breaker as an abandoned industrial ruin (urban-exploration sites, Wikipedia, a YouTube train video) -- none mention a dam, reservoir, or water-supply structure. One hit places 'The Old St. Nicholas Coal Breaker' in Mahanoy, PA, a different town from this dam's Minersville location, confirming there are multiple similarly-named coal sites in the region. A reporter must independently verify this specific reservoir before pitching -- the SERP gives zero signal about it.
View full record & inspection history →Rhode Island
St Marys Pond, a 148-year-old City of Newport water-supply dam in Portsmouth, is rated 'Poor' with no filed emergency warning plan -- and unlike its sibling reservoirs, there's a plausibly-specific published advisory about this pond, showing local media already tracks it recreationally and for water quality, just not for the dam-safety/EAP gap. Paired with sibling reservoir Gardiner Pond (also City of Newport-owned, also Poor, also no EAP), this supports a combined 'Newport's entire reservoir network lacks warning plans' angle.
Exposure: Portsmouth and Middletown residents along Lawton Valley Brook, plus the City of Newport water-supply customer base.
Current status: NID shows condition 'Poor,' hazard 'High,' eap_prepared 'No,' last_inspection_date blank, dam built 1878 -- an old, poorly-rated, high-hazard dam with no public record of a recent inspection or a warning plan.
Coverage: A whatsupnewp.com hit, 'RIDOH and DEM Recommend Avoiding Contact with St. ...', plausibly refers to St. Mary's Pond specifically given the title fragment match, alongside a Patch.com piece on trout stocking and a snoflo.org 'St Marys Pond Dam Report' -- so this pond gets real local coverage as a recreational/water-quality site, but none of it appears to touch dam-safety condition or the missing EAP. This is one of two Aquidneck-area, City of Newport-owned reservoirs in this batch (with Gardiner Pond) -- verify both before deciding whether to pitch jointly or separately.
View full record & inspection history →Johnston's 161-year-old Almy Reservoir dam is rated 'Poor' with no inspection date on file and no filed emergency warning plan -- worth asking the town, and Rhode Island DEM's dam-safety program (independently reported as underfunded and understaffed), why a high-hazard dam above Providence-area homes has no public inspection record.
Exposure: Johnston, RI residents and any homes along Dry Brook downstream, in a dense Providence County suburb.
Current status: NID lists condition 'Poor,' hazard 'High,' eap_prepared 'No,' and last_inspection_date blank -- this could reflect no recent inspection or simply a reporting gap; the record alone can't distinguish the two.
Coverage: An ecori.org piece titled 'DEM's Underfunded, Understaffed Dam Safety Program' is real, on-point systemic reporting about Rhode Island's dam oversight -- but the snippet doesn't confirm it names this specific dam, so treat it as strong background context, not dam-specific coverage. Separately, a 'RIDOH and DEM Recommend Avoiding Contact with Almy Pond' hit is almost certainly about Almy POND in Newport, a different, unrelated water body -- don't conflate the two similarly-named sites.
View full record & inspection history →The City of Newport's 141-year-old Gardiner Pond reservoir dam in Middletown is rated 'Poor' with no inspection date on file and no emergency warning plan -- ask Newport's water utility why a high-hazard dam in its own supply network has no public safety plan, especially alongside its sibling reservoirs in the same system.
Exposure: Middletown/Newport residents along Maidford Brook, plus anyone served by this City of Newport water-supply reservoir.
Current status: NID shows condition 'Poor,' hazard 'High,' eap_prepared 'No,' last_inspection_date blank -- age (1885) plus a Poor rating plus no documented inspection is a real compounding gap on paper, though the blank inspection field could also reflect underreporting.
Coverage: A 'RIDOH and DEM Recommend Avoiding Contact with...' hit (thenewportbuzz.com) is truncated and can't be confirmed as specific to Gardiner Pond -- the same recurring RI water-quality advisory language appears for other Aquidneck-area ponds in this batch (Almy Pond, St Marys Pond), so this is likely a generic seasonal advisory theme, not dam-safety coverage of this particular dam. No coverage found addressing its structural condition or missing EAP.
View full record & inspection history →South Carolina
A small private subdivision pond dam on Gills Creek in Columbia -- the same watershed where multiple dams catastrophically failed during South Carolina's October 2015 floods -- is rated 'Unsatisfactory' (the state's worst rating) and still has no filed emergency warning plan, despite a 2024 inspection that presumably confirmed the bad rating.
Exposure: Homes in the Allan's Mill subdivision and other Gills Creek-adjacent Columbia neighborhoods -- a watershed with SC's most documented dam-failure history.
Current status: NID shows condition 'Unsatisfactory' (worst tier), hazard 'High,' eap_prepared 'No,' but last_inspection_date is recent (09/03/2024) -- this is a documented current bad rating with no follow-through warning plan, not a data-blackout case.
Coverage: SERP surfaces SC's 'High Hazard Potential Dams Annex' (scemd.org) and a FEMA 'South Carolina Dam Failure Assessment' -- real statewide context confirming Gills Creek-area dam failures are an established regulatory concern, not an invented frame. A 'Wilson Millpond Dam in Richland County, SC' hit is a different, unrelated dam that happens to share a templated county-aggregator results page -- don't conflate the two. No coverage found specifically about Allan's Mill Pond 1 itself.
View full record & inspection history →Texas
A private developer's flood-control dam in Laredo hasn't had a documented inspection since 1978 -- nearly half a century -- and has no filed emergency warning plan; ask ALS Laredo Holdings and Webb County drainage officials why a high-hazard flood structure in a fast-growing border city has gone that long without a public look.
Exposure: Developments and neighborhoods in the Lomas Del Sur area of Laredo along the tributary to the Rio Grande, downstream of a private flood-detention structure.
Current status: NID shows condition 'Not Rated,' hazard 'High,' eap_prepared 'No,' last_inspection_date 06/01/1978 -- an extraordinarily stale inspection date (~47 years) is the sharpest, most defensible hook here, independent of the EAP question.
Coverage: A Facebook hit, 'New allegations are surfacing about a South Texas detention...', is ambiguous and should NOT be assumed to be about this detention POND dam -- 'detention' near a border city like Laredo plausibly refers to an immigration-detention controversy rather than stormwater infrastructure; treat as noise unless independently confirmed. Other hits (Webb County Drainage District site, a TxDOT overpass project of the same name) confirm the location and drainage-district context but don't speak to this dam's condition.
View full record & inspection history →The City of Childress owns a century-old, 6,800-acre-foot lake dam rated 'Unsatisfactory' with no filed emergency warning plan, despite a 2022 inspection that presumably confirmed the bad rating -- ask the city, which is both the dam's owner and the party responsible for warning its own roughly 6,000 residents downstream.
Exposure: The town of Childress (population ~6,000) and any homes along Baylor Creek below the dam -- notably, the city itself is both owner and the entity responsible for public warning.
Current status: NID shows condition 'Unsatisfactory,' hazard 'High,' eap_prepared 'No,' last_inspection_date 01/19/2022 (recent) -- a documented, current bad rating with no warning plan on file, not a data-blackout case.
Coverage: SERP is entirely recreational/historical (Texas Parks & Wildlife fishing page, Wikipedia, a historical-society retrospective, local tourism/chamber content) -- no coverage found of the dam's safety condition or the missing EAP.
View full record & inspection history →The private owners of Indian Hills Country Club's lake dam near Atlanta, Texas have left it in 'Unsatisfactory' condition with no filed emergency warning plan for roughly six years since its last documented inspection -- worth asking the ownership group and Texas dam-safety regulators what's being done for the golf-community homes built around and below it.
Exposure: Homes and the country-club community built around Indian Hills Lake in Cass County, plus anyone downstream along the unnamed tributary to Black Bayou.
Current status: NID shows condition 'Unsatisfactory,' hazard 'High,' eap_prepared 'No,' last_inspection_date 11/26/2019 -- a documented bad rating roughly six years old with no public update since and no plan filed.
Coverage: All SERP hits are real-estate and golf-course marketing content (Facebook, RE/MAX, GolfPass, tourism sites) -- there's no news coverage of the dam's safety condition. That absence cuts both ways: no evidence the issue's been addressed, but also no independent confirmation of current status beyond the record.
View full record & inspection history →West Virginia
A roughly 760-foot coal-slurry impoundment above Pigeon Creek -- among the tallest earthen dams in the country if that recorded height holds up -- has no public condition rating or inspection date, and a slurry-related spill on Pigeon Creek was reportedly filed with WV DEP; frame as a transparency/monitoring story (MSHA and state DEP oversight, not a missed state EAP mandate) anchored to a concrete, current hook worth verifying directly with DEP.
Exposure: Ford/Delbarton-area homes along Pigeon Creek, Mingo County coalfield communities.
Current status: Not Rated, no inspection date, no EAP; extreme scale (14,702 acre-ft max storage) for a private coal-company-owned impoundment completed in 2004.
Coverage: One SERP hit ('Delbarton Mingo Pigeon Creek spill reported to WV DEP,' Facebook) names the same river as the record and points to a real, current incident -- treat as an unverified lead (thin social-media title only) to confirm against actual WV DEP incident records, not as established fact. The recorded 760-ft height is unusually large and should be independently verified before publication. Other results reference distinct nearby impoundments (Ragland, Twelvepole) in the same county -- do not conflate.
View full record & inspection history →The 605-foot Brushy Fork coal-slurry impoundment -- one of the largest in the country, long tied to the Marsh Fork Elementary relocation fight and Coal River Mountain Watch monitoring -- still shows no public condition rating or inspection date and no state EAP filed in the federal dam database; the honest hook is that even the most scrutinized slurry dam in the state has a public transparency gap, not that it is about to fail.
Exposure: Pettus and Coal River valley communities downstream, including the area near the former Marsh Fork Elementary School site.
Current status: Not Rated, no inspection date, no EAP despite being one of the most publicly documented and watched coal-slurry impoundments in the US (34,582 acre-ft max storage, owned by Marfork Coal Company, completed 1996).
Coverage: Unusually well-documented for this batch -- has its own Wikipedia page, a WV Gazette-Mail article on renewed safety concerns, ongoing monitoring/flyover documentation from Coal River Mountain Watch and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and a widely-cited Sierra Club piece on its scale. This is real, verifiable independent coverage, not just database mirrors -- the strongest evidentiary base in the batch.
View full record & inspection history →A 260-foot coal-refuse dam holding nearly 4,830 acre-feet above Dundon has no publicly listed inspection date, no condition rating, and no state-filed emergency action plan in the federal dam inventory -- the honest ask is who (MSHA, WV DEP) is actually tracking this structure's safety, since coal-refuse impoundments sit outside the standard state dam-safety EAP regime, not whether a routine state mandate was simply skipped.
Exposure: Dundon and residents along Big Branch of Lilly Fork, Clay County, downstream of the impoundment.
Current status: Not Rated, no inspection date on file, no EAP -- a complete absence of public safety documentation for a 260-ft high-hazard impoundment built in 1997, owned by Fola Coal Company.
Coverage: SERP is dominated by an unrelated, far more famous disaster with a near-identical name: the 2010 Upper Big Branch MINE disaster (Raleigh County, Massey Energy, 29 miners killed in an explosion) is a different facility, county, company, and hazard type from this Clay County coal-refuse DAM -- a reporter must not conflate them. Only snoflo.org (a dam-data aggregator) names this specific facility directly; no independent news coverage of this dam was found.
View full record & inspection history →A 355-foot coal-slurry impoundment owned by Catenary Coal Company has no public condition rating or inspection date in the federal dam inventory and no state EAP filed -- since MSHA, not a state dam-safety office, is the primary regulator for coal-waste impoundments, the honest story is the public transparency gap on a structure this size, not a missed state mandate.
Exposure: Port Amherst-area and Pointlick Branch valley residents below the impoundment.
Current status: Not Rated, no inspection date, no EAP; an active slurry impoundment (2,217 acre-ft max storage) built in 1999.
Coverage: A Schnabel Engineering project page referencing 'Campbells Creek Coal Refuse Disposal Facility' suggests real professional engineering oversight exists outside NID's public fields. Other SERP hits reference the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster (a different, historic dam failure elsewhere in WV) for regional context only, not this facility. Location note: the record's county field (Nicholas) sits oddly against the named place, Port Amherst, which is more commonly associated with Kanawha County near Charleston -- confirm the exact site before publishing.
View full record & inspection history →Catenary Coal Company's 310-foot Moccasin Hollow coal-slurry impoundment above Orgas, WV has no publicly rated dam-safety condition on file -- since coal refuse/slurry impoundments are typically overseen by MSHA rather than the state dam-safety program NID's EAP field tracks, the sharper, defensible story isn't 'no EAP' alone, it's that a massive private slurry dam over an Appalachian hollow shows 'Not Rated' condition and no visible public inspection record at all.
Exposure: Orgas and other Boone County hollow communities directly downstream of a 310-ft, 2,452-acre-foot slurry impoundment.
Current status: NID shows condition 'Not Rated,' hazard 'High,' eap_prepared 'No,' last_inspection_date blank, dam height 310 ft (among the tallest structures in this batch) -- this could be a genuine oversight gap or simply reflect that MSHA, not the state agency reporting to NID, holds the relevant safety paperwork; a reporter needs to check MSHA's own impoundment inspection records before asserting no oversight exists at all.
Coverage: A wvnstv.com hit about 'a nearby slurry [impoundment renewal]' draws local concern, but 'nearby' suggests it may describe an adjacent, different impoundment rather than Moccasin Hollow itself -- verify before citing. A separate 'Rocklick Slurry Impoundment in Boone County, WV' hit is a distinct, differently-named impoundment surfaced via the same templated county-aggregator pages, not this dam. WV DEP's 'Pits and Impoundments' page confirms the state tracks slurry impoundments generally, useful for framing but not dam-specific confirmation.
View full record & inspection history →A coal-refuse impoundment near Drennen holding nearly 20,000 acre-feet -- one of the largest in this batch -- has no public condition rating or inspection date and no state EAP filed; the honest story is the size-to-transparency gap under MSHA/DEP oversight, not an imminent-failure claim.
Exposure: Drennen and Nicholas County hollow residents downstream on Sugar Camp Branch.
Current status: Not Rated, no inspection date, no EAP; very large storage (19,901 acre-ft max) behind a 150-ft dam, owned by Power Mountain Coal Company, completed 2006.
Coverage: No coverage specific to this facility was found; SERP hits are generic slurry-impoundment context (regulatory text, an aggregator report, references to the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster elsewhere in the state) rather than reporting on Sugar Camp Branch itself.
View full record & inspection history →A 363-foot coal-slurry impoundment near Benwood, in the Wheeling metro area, is owned by Consolidation Coal Company and has no public condition rating, inspection date, or state EAP on file -- pair the transparency-gap frame with the local advocacy concern already reported over a nearby slurry permit, after verifying it actually names this facility.
Exposure: Benwood and Ohio River-area residents near Wheeling, plus Boggs Run valley residents.
Current status: Not Rated, no inspection date, no EAP; 2,037 acre-ft max storage, notable for sitting close to a populated metro area (Wheeling/Ohio River) rather than a remote hollow.
Coverage: A local-TV headline ('Environmental advocates concerned over slurry permit,' wowktv.com) suggests real, current local attention to slurry permitting in the region -- confirm directly whether it names this specific impoundment before citing it. A separate hit ('Arkwright Slurry Impoundment,' cecinc.com) is a different, unrelated facility -- don't conflate.
View full record & inspection history →A 320-foot coal-slurry impoundment holding over 12,000 acre-feet is now owned by 'Rockspring Development Inc' rather than an operating coal company -- worth asking whether this is a post-mining successor/holding entity managing a legacy liability -- and it has no public condition rating, inspection date, or state EAP on file.
Exposure: Right Fork of Camp Creek hollow residents, Boone County coalfield communities (pending location confirmation).
Current status: Not Rated, no inspection date, no EAP; large scale (12,191 acre-ft max storage, built 1992) with an owner name that doesn't read as an active coal operator -- a possible orphaned/legacy-liability angle worth confirming against WV DEP corporate/reclamation records.
Coverage: Location fields are slightly inconsistent -- the query and city field say 'East Lynn,' a place more commonly associated with Wayne County (near East Lynn Lake), while the record's county field says Boone -- confirm the precise site before publishing. SERP shows the dam listed in USA Today Network public dam-database mirrors (existing baseline coverage, not original reporting) plus a technical paper on coal-impoundment breakthroughs; no dam-specific news coverage was found.
View full record & inspection history →A small privately-owned pond dam in Harrison County is rated 'Unsatisfactory' -- the worst NID condition category -- and classified high-hazard, yet has no emergency action plan on file and no recorded inspection date; a story about why an individually-owned dam carrying the state's own worst safety rating hasn't been required to file a warning plan.
Exposure: Homes along Bingamon Creek near Pine Bluff, Harrison County.
Current status: Condition assessed as Unsatisfactory (lowest rating), no EAP, no inspection date on record -- a small (30-ft height, ~20 acre-ft max storage) recreational dam owned by private individuals (Mary Rose and Joe Salerno).
Coverage: SERP signal is thin and mostly noise -- several hits are for an unrelated Lock and Dam 4 near Pine Bluff, ARKANSAS (a different state entirely sharing the 'Pine Bluff' place name), and others are generic database mirrors of the same NID listing (which do confirm Harrison County, WV) rather than independent reporting. No news coverage specific to this dam was found; the verdict rests on the structured NID record itself, which is the strongest signal here.
View full record & inspection history →A 272-foot coal-slurry impoundment near Thacker has no public condition rating, no inspection date, and no state EAP on file -- a real but modest entry in a broader Mingo County pattern of large private slurry dams with thin public safety documentation, best pitched as part of that cluster rather than as a standalone story.
Exposure: Thacker and downstream Conley Fork / Tug Fork valley residents.
Current status: Not Rated, no inspection date, no EAP; 1,705 acre-ft max storage, owned by LCC West Virginia, built 1993.
Coverage: Almost no coverage specific to this dam -- most SERP hits are neighboring Mingo County slurry impoundments (Twelvepole, Ben Creek, Delbarton) plus a local-TV mention of 'recent renewal of a nearby slurry [permit]' that cannot be confirmed as referring to this specific facility. This is a data-driven candidate, not one with independent reporting behind it yet.
View full record & inspection history →