re: #267 lawhawk

There are thousands of privately owned dams nationwide.

One of the worst disasters in US history was due to the private dam owned by a sporting/hunting club failing after rainstorms.

Johnstown PA. Might have heard of it? It killed more than 2,000 people when the South Fork dam failed.

It was a privately owned and maintained dam. Except that it wasn’t properly maintained and it was enlarged without adequate steps taken to deal with heavy rains and how to protect the structure from being overtopped.

UPDATE:
More than half of all dams in the US are privately owned.

I went to Johnstown a lot as a kid as my mom’s parents were from there. It’s definitely a story of why government needs to play a role in infrastructure maintenance.