Eroding Dam Holds Back Colossal Lake

The Wolf Creek Dam in Burkesville, Ky., holds back one of the country’s largest manmade lakes, but residents worry the dam is starting to deteriorate.

The New York Times reported on the aging dam and its slow but steady decline in an area that is famed for trout fishing and million-dollar houseboats.

In January, Lake Cumberland, on which Wolf Creek Dam sits, was lowered to 40 feet below its summer level. The dam, which stretches a mile across, holds back about a trillion gallons of water — enough to cover the state of Kentucky to a depth of three inches.

The Times reported that the town of Burkesville has a four-hour evacuation plan in case the dam breaks. The water level in Lake Cumberland is another unforeseen result of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Bill Peoples, a spokesman for the corps office in Nashville that runs the Wolf Creek Dam, told the Times it would take $309 million and about seven years to repair the dam, including filling in the earthen sections and controlling erosion.