By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — Floodwaters have seriously eroded the back side of a watershed dam south of Sabetha, leaving it vulnerable to failure.
Kansas state officials are closely watching the dam.
Water Structures Program Manager Terry Medley with the state Division of Water Resources says his team began monitoring the dam Tuesday. He visited the dam site last night. His dam safety team leader is on site today.
“There has been a little bit more erosion on the dam,” Medley tells St. Joseph Post. “The water level in the reservoir has dropped about a foot-and-a-half.”
Medley disputes an earlier report that claimed failure of the dam was imminent. He describes the damage to the dam as serious, but adds its failure is not imminent.
County officials closed two nearby roads, County Road 220 and County Road 250, as a precautionary measure.
“We’re just continuing to monitor the situation,” Medley says. “We don’t believe that anybody is in danger at this point and we don’t believe any serious infrastructure damage would occur if the dam failed.”
The Kansas Division of Water Resources is in communication with the Kansas Division of Emergency Management.
Medley says it is unlikely that if the dam failed, flash flooding would reach Highway 36 in northeast Kansas, also as reported earlier.
Medley says the dam is under close observation.
“It has not breached,” Medley says. “We are still continuing to monitor the situation. There was a little bit more erosion overnight, but nothing that wasn’t expected from our division and our dam safety team. And, the damage that would occur if it did fail would be limited to agricultural farm ground.”
Still, the National Weather Service has issued a flash flood watch for south of Sabetha down the Delaware River which could affect east-central Nemaha County, southwestern Brown County, and northeastern Jackson County.
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By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A dam south of Sabetha, Kansas is expected to fail this afternoon, sending floodwaters downstream on the Delaware River.
The National Weather Service in Topeka has issued a flash flood warning for southwestern Brown County, east-central Nemaha County, and northeastern Jackson County.
At 2:30 this afternoon, emergency management officials reported the failure of the dam a mile south of Sabehta was imminent.
If the dam indeed fails, flash flooding is expected to overrun U.S. Highway 36 in northeastern Kansas. The Kickapoo Indian Reservation and Golden Eagle Casino are also threatened. The National Weather Service says water could rise to near 13.8 feet at U.S. Highway 36 about an hour after the dam fails. Water could rise to just over 11 feet at U.S. Highway 75 three-and-a-half hours after the failure.