The concrete spillway on the Lower Salem Dam is riddled with cracks. Steel support beams push out from the sides of the walls, which bend from the weight of surrounding earth. Much of the ground along the base of the dam is a muddy swamp.
Water seeps through, weakening the base of the structure.
The spillway and its drainage pipe are much too small for a lake this size. A steady stream of water runs from the pipe into a narrow creek, which winds past a row of tiny houses below the dam. If that pipe was running full, a lot of these houses would already be flooded. But it's not like this dam is anything unusual to Shriver. Many of those he oversees are just as bad as this one, or maybe worse.