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With steam pipes breaking in New York City , the collapsing of bridges and mines across the nation, hurricanes breaching the levee system in New Orleans, and record breaking floods and wildfires, there's been a lot of talk about the vulnerability of the American infrastructure. How it's too old, how it needs to be repaired. This problem doesn't affect only big cities like Manhattan or Minneapolis. Talking about those places incessantly in the media overshadows how infrastructure extends to places further than that, places that seem insignificant compared to the big places. Places like the Sidney Dam in upstate New York. Infrastructure affects all these places, and the Sidney Dam on the border of Otsego and Delaware Counties is one of them. The Sidney Dam had its moment of infamy during the floods of 2006, where floods inundated upstate New York. Waterfalls appeared on the hills of my property, carrying themselves down to the rivers below and flooding out the valleys. The police scanner broadcasted flood after flood, and of basements, whole houses being inundated by rising water. Then came the announcement that the Sidney Dam had been breached, panic entering even the so-called objective personnel that manned the emergency airwaves. The whole thing turned out to be a rumor. Someone had seen water cascading over the dam and assumed the worst. Disasters tend to do that; not only this major one was rumored to have cracked, but other dams had been rumored to have breached as well. People supposedly drowned riding ATVs during the flood never died, and there was a rumor that the person who started the rumor about the Sidney Dam breaching was arrested. They all turned out to be as false as the Sidney Dam's breach. In the chaos, it's hard to know what's true and what isn't, because things are so chaotic anyway.  In the end, it tuned out that the dam was deemed "structurally sound" by the Army Corps of Engineers, and no breach was imminent. The flood of 2006 had been a disaster for Otsego and Delaware Counties, but not that much of a disaster. Water overflowed the dam in the same way that the rivers overflowed, and eventually subsided. Soon enough, the dam could go back to being the backdrop for family picnics at the East Sidney Recreational Area, a more benign image than a collapse that would inundate thousands of people. That is the venue in which we were here today. When you reach the parking area, you can park right up to the archway of the top of the dam. There is the sign that announces that you have reached the East Sidney Lake, prominently featuring the Army Corps of Engineers' logo, a white building resembling a castle or fort in a red background. A path at the top of the dam allows you to venture partway across it, so you can look across the creek in either direction.  The wind whipped with a misplaced ferocity, showing autumn steam when the sultry stillness of early June was called for. But nature seemed to have its own plans, a reminder that what man placed to keep it at bay could come crumbling down at a moment's notice. The grass pitched forward, bending in the breeze as though to avoid its blow, allowing the wind to design patterns in its wake as it raked through. It seemed up close to the dam that there was a water line, the pattern of darker discoloration pasted up against a lighter shade, as though up until recently the water line had been higher and hadn't had a chance to weather away. Maybe it had been from snow melt; it seemed counterintuitive to be from the flood if everything had overflowed; wouldn't have everything been darker from floodwater? But it also seemed, looking back at the pictures, that there hadn't been much discoloration to begin with, as though the whole thing had been a product of my invention, just like the dam was an invention of someone else's mind. There were no signs restricting us from walking down to the creek at the foot of the dam, so we headed down the hill in roughhouse fashion sans trail. The angle was at a steep pitch; it felt like it was at least sixty degrees (though obviously it had to be less than this) and would have needed a runway for runaway trucks if this was any type of highway. After suffering through the torture on our ankles, we stood by the closest point where the public could stand by the dam. A concrete path led directly up to an entrance in the dam, where the interior was lit up in sepia tones by a single light. It resembled a medieval torch illuminating the dark corridors of a castle in King Arthur's Britain. No one seemed to be inside, at least from our cursory glance. No one came, and no one went. Just the single light from deep inside, as though a beacon had been sent and no one had been there to receive it.  When we first moved to the region, we found this place during a random drive trying to discover what was here and what the place was like. Just like now, it was bereft of life, as though it had been created during some boom time before all the jobs moved away and with it all the townspeople. With all the hype about homeland security, it seemed weird that anyone could just walk up to the place with no interference and stand as close to the entrance as we were now. The water was brown with what was presumably mud from the floor, and slate rocks littered the banks. I don't know if these rocks were naturally from the bottom of the creek, or if the Corps had put them in for some kind of stabilizing effect. It was like John McPhee's book, "The Control of Nature", in which he describes how man has tinkered with nature in order to suit civilization, even if it interfered with other species. The dam itself was proof positive of that. How would one live amongst a raging creek that one couldn't predict, and why not redirect it if it you knew were possible? There was both negative and positive in just about anything that man created, it seemed. According to the Army Corp of Engineers website, it is the town of Sidney which maintains the East Sidney Recreational Area. From Memorial Day through some arbitrary day in mid-September, one could enjoy: a beach, a picnic area, a campground and a playground. Boating seemed to be part of the equation as well, though when I was there, I couldn't see any boats, at least from where I was. I did see campers and trailers to one side, though whether they were residents or visitors, I couldn't tell. No one was about, as though we visited this place during an evacuation. On this day, the only human presence seemed to be us, unless some engineer lingered in the lights of the facility inside. It was a playground with a confused identity, waiting for instructions whether it was for survival or for play, and was unsure what to do with two people just looking at it.  There was a stone contraption that resembled a drain making its way up from the walkway to the top of the hill. Walking along the creek on the path, we had two choices: walk to the end of the path, which led to one of the local streets where we could have a level walk but have to find our way back amongst the streets. Or we could make our way back up the hill. With the option of this dried out drain as transport, which again didn't have any signs discouraging us, we decided to take the harder but quicker way with this stone contraption to cushion us as we walked.  There was still no one there when we returned to level ground up above. In the wind and the cold, maybe the masses were discouraged from having an afternoon on the lake. Maybe it was just something they wanted to do as they drove by on the state road, but had too much to do. But whatever the reason, the winds blew through grass that were bereft of tourists and playmates. Maybe the wind was trying to discourage visitors and reclaim the territory as its own, an arm wrestle between man's creation and nature's power. For now, the dam was silent and the waters low. No panicking here today. But the memories of a year ago reminded me of how quickly that could change, the security signed over, only given to the human race on loan. |
