There isn't enough money being pumped into Texas dams, and your safety could someday be jeopardized because of it.
More than half of the 7,500 dams in Texas have never has a safety inspection, and of those inspected, 173 are in poor condition and more than 1,500 don't have an emergency plan.
University of Texas engineering professor Mike Walton said there's just not enough funding at the state and national level.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), it would take nearly $670 million to fix the problems with Texas' most critical dams like fixing floodgates or upgrading aging dams.
"That's a lot of money and it's going to have to come from somewhere," Jack Furlong of the ASCE said.
Right now not much is coming from anywhere. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) receives $697,549 in state and federal funding to run their dam safety program. That pays for only seven full-time inspectors who are tasked with overseeing 7,644 dams.
"We are spread very thin and there's going to have to be more staff, more frequent inspections to give us a good program that we feel confident will work," Furlong said.
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Dam safety
The state hasn't set aside the funding to upgrade and maintain the failing dams.
 
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The ASCE is not confident with the state's efforts now. They gave dams in Texas a D minus and roads and bridges a C minus when they graded the state's infrastructure in 2004. They'll give Texas infrastructure another look in 2010.
Engineers say state officials and taxpayers should not be not be satisfied with a D minus and instead should come up with the money needed to improve state dams for the sake of all those who rely on them.
"State services are lean in many different aspects and I'm not surprised by that," Rep. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said.
Creighton is working on legislation to boost funding for Texas dams. During the last legislative session he sponsored a bill that included moving the Dam Safety Program from the TCEQ under the Governor's Division of Emergency Management.
"That division receives federal money and has a greater ability to receive funding of an amount that's necessary to protect the infrastructure we are looking to,” Creighton said.
The portion of House Bill 3073 pertaining to dams didn't get the momentum it needed. It was pushed aside.
Creighton plans to pursue the issue next session. His staff is spending the interim researching how dams are managed and maintained.
Engineers hope other legislators will be just as willing to be proactive.
"I would hope that it doesn't take a catastrophic failure to bring attention to the particular problem at hand," Walton said.
