The St. Francis dam was one of the the biggest failures in history. It did not consist a very strong base and it was built extremely high which was like a ticking time bomb. This dam was originally 184 ft high but was then elevated 20 ft ore but the base of it was not increased in width. This disaster ended up clearing about 24,000 acres of fertile land, 1,200 homes, 140,000 trees were either uprooted or damaged.

That’s not all the damage that this dam caused. In a couple of hours after the dam had busted nearly 500 hundred people would end up loosing their lives. The water would end up reaching to these cities Santa Paula, Newhall, Piru and Fillmore in Ventura County. This badly engineered dam is now part of Ventura County’s most destructive events in history.

The water from the St. Francis dam went where ever it wanted to go. Now there is a new dam that was constructed in Ojai which holds the water in place and the water doesn’t move from there. This dam was built in 1947 and was only able to hold 7,000 acres of water. Near it Lake Casitas is brims with about 254,000 acres of water. many question the reason why this dam was built because of how much water Lake Casitas can hold.

There has been plans of removal for this dam for years now. The dam is becoming unstable because the concrete is beginning to weaken and also because there is no use of any more since we are in a different era now. it might sound easy to do but this project will be a tough one because there will be dirt and debris that will cover the Matilija creek.

The County Board of Supervisors in February approved of a contract so that technical studies can be done on the Matilija Dam removal. This project is said to start as soon as July but it will be hard because of all the water that pours out of the dam. The cost of this project will be around $111 million to 148 million.

https://www.vcreporter.com/2018/03/brealing-point-how-the-st-francis-and-matilija-dams-are-irrevocably-linked/