America's biggest source of renewable energy is crumbling to bits(VIDEO)
Hoover Dam seen from a helicopter in 2015.
Rebecca Harrington
The biggest source of renewable energy in the US isn't solar or wind; it's hydropower.
Over 87,000 dams operate across the country, and while not all of them provide electricity, hydropower made up nearly half of the US' renewable energy in 2014.
But the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has classified about 14,000 of those dams as "high hazard potential."
This classification means that a catastrophic failure would likely kill someone and cause huge economic and environmental losses. As dams continue to age, more and more dams are considered high-hazard.
Hydropower is one of the oldest sources of renewable energy, and most US dams were built decades ago.
The average age of dams in the US is 52 years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2013 Report Card for America's Infrastructure. Dams as a whole got a "D" grade in the report card.
Hoover Dam, perhaps the most famous, was built in 1936, and inspired similar projects for FDR's New Deal.
Today, to repair and update just the high-hazard dams, the Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimates it would cost $21 billion. The association says total amount needed to repair all dams that need updating is $54 billion.
dam inventory map
FEMA
A map of all the country's dams, color-coded by how hazardous they are.
But repairing the dams can't be accomplished by a simple government budget allotment. The government only owns 4% of the country's dams; 69% are privately owned.
The National Dam Safety Program is tasked with overseeing dam upgrades and distributing the money to do so, but the act authorizing it expired in 2011. The American Society of Civil Engineers' report card recommends renewing the program, but it's not the kind of glamorous enterprise that makes it easy to rally support.
As John Oliver so perfectly sums up in his show on America's failing infrastructure in March 2015: "You don't get to cut a ribbon after routine repairs. Infrastructure is like Legos. Building is fun; destroying is fun; but a Lego maintenance set would be the boring f------ toy in the world."
But if we're going to keep using dams as a viable source of renewable energy, they have to be updated.
Watch Oliver's full clip on infrastructure in this video:
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