A visit to Mud Mountain Dam

A week after the flood, we decided to visit Mud Mountain Dam. The Army Corps of Engineers released water from this dam last week following the cresting of the rivers, only to flood a small town (Pacific), a few miles from here. This dam, and several others in the area, were built as flood control dams to keep the valley towns from flooding. Usually this works well, but this time something went wrong. It was probably a combination of heavy snowfall, followed by heavy rain, full rivers, full dams, and miscalculation of how much water to release and how fast to release it. A lack of notification to the citizens in the affected town did not help either. This dam is a very interesting place to visit, so we went to see for ourselves just how much water had been released. From the visitor vantage point, it was clear that a LOT of water had been released. The water had been up the sides of the dam, higher than the trees that were growing there. It was an awesome sight. I am surprised that none of the local media has done a fly-over or shown any pictures of the inside of the dam. Go to the Army Corp of Engineers website to see pictures of the dam and its specs.