Following catastrophic flooding in Texas on July 4, the city of Carnation “urges the city of Seattle to learn from flood tragedy.”
Carnation issued a news release July 11, following up on ongoing concerns about the early warning system for the Tolt Dam, which has been turned off for more than a year after multiple false alarms.
The dam, tucked away in the foothills of the Cascades, sits above Carnation and holds up to 57,900 acre-feet of water. If the dam were to break, it would cause “catastrophic damage,” according to the city’s news release, as well as an immediate evacuation of Carnation and nearby areas.
The early warning alert system includes sirens that would go off around Carnation alerting residents of the dam break. But the system has been turned off since April 2024 as “a third-party assessment of the siren system is conducted,” according to Seattle Public Utilities, which owns the dam.
The latest update on the dam, posted Feb. 11, says a third-party panel of experts is reviewing regulations, evaluating past issues and how the city of Seattle responded and conducting interviews with residents and stakeholders.
The system was turned off following eight false alarms starting in June 2020. Most recently, the alarm was accidentally activated March 27, 2024.
Following last year’s incident, then-District 12 Sen. Brad Hawkins proposed a bill that would require Seattle Public Utilities to pay the city of Carnation $1 million for each future false alarm.
“The Tolt Dam supplies Seattle with $30 million in yearly revenue. The city of Carnation receives no water from the dam, or any revenue,” said Deputy Mayor Jim Ribail in the July 11 news release. “Seattle’s asset poses a significant risk to our community. All we ask is that they mitigate that risk.”
Carnation also noted that, out of the six Texas counties affected by this month’s flooding, only Kendall County has an audible early warning system — and Kendall County had no loss of life.
“With Carnation’s high tourism and recreational population, most of which do not even know they are downstream from a dam, it is imperative that the outdoor sirens are operational and managed by an entity that has the capacity to effectively deliver immediate notification that doesn’t rely on cellular service,” the news release says.
