Taum Sauk Lake Dam Breach - not your typical dam.

Look at the shocking photo of Taum Sauk lake of southeast Missouri. It is not your typical dam which is currently breached because of the recent heavy rains. The earthened hydrolectric dam's water breached walls is now flooding Black River. This is a rare breaching of any large earthened dam. But it is not the typical lake or dam you'd expect.

Taum Sauk lake is a 200-acre reservoir located on the East Fork of the Black River north of Lesterville in Reynolds County. This reservoir is owned by AmerenUE. This is a two lake pump-storage hydroelectric plant with the upper reservoir located on Proffit Mountain, approximately 800 feet higher than the lower reservoir. When electrical demands peak the water's energy is collected from the upper reservoir as it flows to the lower reservoir. During low electrical demands the water is pumped to the upper reservoir for gravity energy storage.

Read more about how this dam was created. It's not your typical dam as you would expect but a dam where the top of Proffit Mountain was lopped off to create a single above ground earthened dam. Besides Profitt and Church Mountains, there are at least five other nearby sites that might house a hydroelectric plant modeled after the existing Taum Sauk plant. And now, it's already breached.

Welcome Michelle Malkin readers. Shocking, isn't it? Enough to do a double take on the picture. Never expected to see a different type of dam like that. Live and learn as they say.

UPDATE: Thank you readers. Yesterday's visits netted 600+ hits. Ya'll come back.

UPDATE II: Gateway Pundit has much more details, updates and pictures of the dam break. I wonder how Church Mountain is fairing since it's similar to Profitt mountain that contained Taum Sauk lake?

UPDATE III: A reader brought to my attention that the reservoir size is less than 200 acres. The reservoir actually covers an area of 55 acres, is 90 feet deep and holds 1.5 billion gallons of water. The 200 acres is, I believe, the size of the park and not the reservoir itself alone. Check out the cached page (orginal page is no longer) of how part of the Taum Sauk reservoir was built. Some interesting info of how a geosynthetic linings were laid out inside the reservoir in 2004 because

"Since it's construction in the 1960's, cracks had formed in the 1.3 to 1 side slopes, resulting in two feet of water loss from the upper reservoir every day."

Interesting.