How is the Low Head Dam replacement coming along?
l3wis A few months back Cameraman Bruce (Danielson) and I were talking about all the missing information to the public about how the dam got approved and what process was happening to make this happen. In an ideal society that has a local government that is TRANSPARENT we would have had all that information, but not in Sioux Falls. So Bruce had the brilliant idea to do a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request from the Corp of Engineers for the project. While it took several months and 2.2 GB of information, the CORPS granted Mr. Danielson’s request. I have been sorting thru the materials for over a month and finally have them to where I can start posting about the process. There was many twists in turns in the process, including changing the direction of the design, water contamination, a refusal from the SD Historical Society (State Agency) and much more. While most of the materials are redacted of personal names, it is easy to determine who the contractors are, who the city employees are and who the CORPS are. The irony is any email or correspondence coming from the CORPS is extremely professional and detailed, city employees and especially the independent contractors NOT SO MUCH. It seemed they didn’t want to get the CORPS involved unless they ran into an issue. Which is odd since the CORPS won’t officially approve the project until it is finished, and that may not be until the end of next summer since after the dam construction is finished they have to create wetlands around the area to preserve the area AS IS.
What I have found fascinating is the city seems to be doing this by the seat of their pants and crossing their fingers it will work, which I believe has put the project over budget by at least $1 Million because of the poor planning and lack of concerted coordination with the CORPS. This city will never learn, when you do things in the OPEN you save the taxpayers money and it makes the process smoother. If they would have also made the process more open and brought the public along, there may have been members in our community who wanted to weigh in with ideas. I have often argued our city is full of smart folks who understand this stuff, if we would just ASK them. It reminds of the process when a group of citizens decided to tackle sustainability in Sux and all of the efforts and work turned into toilet paper Poops used to wipe his tight ass. We have experts in Sux, but instead we use leaders who are more concerned about selfies and jumping jacks then expert advice.
I hope to put up the materials by week’s end, it’s going to be a whopper of a post.
