{"id":4557,"date":"2019-11-11T14:59:08","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T19:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=4557"},"modified":"2019-11-11T14:59:29","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T19:59:29","slug":"two-high-hazard-dams-located-in-polk-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/11\/11\/two-high-hazard-dams-located-in-polk-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Two \u201chigh hazard\u201d dams located in Polk County"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

 A more than two-year investigation by The\nAssociated Press has found scores of dams nationwide in even worse\ncondition, and in equally dangerous locations. They loom over homes,\nbusinesses, highways or entire communities that could face life-threatening\nfloods if the dams don’t hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the report, there are close to 2,000 “high\nhazard” dams across 44 states and Puerto Rico, and two of those dams are\nin Polk County. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first is the Meadow View Lake Dam in Lakeland, and the\nsecond is a dam in Winter Haven just off of Winter Lake Road and Thornhill\nRoad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The report said both are high hazard dams in poor condition,\nmeaning a failure is likely to result in people being killed. Experts said\nthe problem is a lot of these dams were constructed in the early 20th century\nand were not built up to today’s standards.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fixing the at-risk dams are not as easy as it sounds. It\nwould require completely draining the body of water around these dams, possibly\ndestroying local economies developed around those bodies. There are roughly\n90,000 dams in the U.S. Experts said it would cost around $70 billion to make\nsure they’re all up to par.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deaths from dam failures have declined since a series of\ncatastrophic collapses in the 1970s prompted the federal and state governments\nto step up their safety efforts. Yet about 1,000 dams have failed over the past\nfour decades, killing 34 people, according to Stanford University’s National\nPerformance of Dams Program.  
\n 
\nBuilt for flood control, irrigation, water supply, hydropower, recreation or\nindustrial waste storage, the nation’s dams are over a half-century old on\naverage. Some are no longer adequate to handle the intense rainfall and floods\nof a changing climate. Yet they are being relied upon to protect more and more\npeople as housing developments spring up nearby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 A more than two-year investigation by The Associated Press has found scores of dams nationwide in even worse condition, and in equally dangerous locations. They loom over homes, businesses, highways or entire… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}