The Mosul Dam - Why Iraq Needs a Noah

Someone had better build an ark in Iraq—and fast. An earthen damn in Iraq, often been described as “ginormous” in Congressional PowerPoint presentations, is in danger of collapsing. And, like most everything else that is wrong with Iraq, no one is close to even thinking about maybe fixing it.

The vast majority of what I know about dams comes from my youthful experiences with streams and storm drains, which, for whatever reason, are absolute kid magnets. My first thought whenever I saw flowing water was, “I have to pee!” But my second thought, after taking care of Number 1 (ha ha!), was, “I have to put a rock in there!” And I did. There is some kind of power involved in diverting the natural flow of water, and when you are eight years old you take whatever power you can get. But the most important lesson I learned was if you want to stop water, you gotta put something heavy in front of it.

Now, as a licensed honest-to-God civil engineer, I do paperwork all day. But, theoretically, I could be hired by a company that does dams. And while I have never been included in the design of a dam, I know enough about them that I am absolutely certain that, of all the places on God’s green earth the last place that you will ever find me is standing under that dam.

Here is a short list of bad things about the Mosul Dam:

1. The dam is in Iraq.
2. The dam is built on gypsum, the main ingredient in drywall. If you want to know how gypsum performs in water, ask Katrina.
3. The dam depends on 24 pumps operating continuously to fill the dissolving gypsum with grout.
4. The dam is surrounded by people who believe God wants them to blow stuff up.
5. The first province to flood would be Nineveh, which is like God’s punching bag.

If I were one of the 500,000 residents of Mosul and Baghdad soon to be under 65 feet of water, I would seriously consider investing in a canoe.