Sahagún, L. (2021, February 10). California’s aging dams face new perils, 50 years after Sylmar quake crisis. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2021-02-10/earthquakes-climate-change-threaten-california-dams. 

 On many occasions, dams have malfunctioned or collapsed and caused the loss of property and lives. In 1971, an earthquake hit Sylmar and nearly collapsed the Lower Van Norman Dam in Granada Hills. Ever since this event and events like it, there has been more motivation to look into dam safety and provide funding to ensure dams are up to date and working correctly. Unfortunately, because of the sheer volume, many dams in the U.S. have long outlived the capacity of what they were built for without being renovated. 

The stories of failing and collapsing dams relate to environmental science because they discuss how these collapsing dams destroyed land and ecosystems. These incidents killed many people, but they also destroyed property and animals as well. Reading this article just reinforced the opinion I already had which was that dams are in desperate need of more attention that we are currently giving them. The issue of dam safety stretches across the United States and has the potential to affect tens of thousands of lives, yet the government still isn’t doing enough about the issue.