CARNATION, Wash. — Carnation residents who live downstream of the Tolt River Dam say they are fed up with false alarms from the dam's emergency system.
A group of those impacted took a trip to Seattle City Hall to make sure their concerns were being addressed.
The Tolt River Dam holds back nearly 58 thousand acre-feet of water and provides the City of Seattle with nearly 40% of its drinking water—but the town of Carnation and its residents say they are bearing all the risk for no reward.
“Today, we are coming here to speak to city council, basically in the aspect of humanity. We want to bring to their attention what these false alarms have done to our community,” said lifelong Carnation resident Morgan Henley.
Cellphone video from March 27 captured audio from a siren that led some residents to believe the Tolt Dam had failed – an event that would be catastrophic. A siren that marks the eighth false alarm in four years.
The City of Seattle owns the damn, Seattle Public Utilities operates it, and on Tuesday night, they confirmed to KING 5 the false alarm was accidentally set off by a contractor working on the system remotely.
Since the most recent false alarm, the system has been deactivated. SPU promised to warn residents through other channels in the unlikely event of a failure.
“The sense of security is gone because there are people who react to it with PTSD now; some people react to it by not reacting at all because we don’t believe it anymore. To be a community that is conditioned to these responses over something that could literally wipe out the entire town, and Carnation would cease to exist if that dam broke,” Henley continued.
Residents and the City of Carnation say they are planning legal action—some going as far as calling for the reservoir to be drained. The system provides as much as 40% of the drinking water for the City of Seattle.
In a statement, SPU says that during an investigation, it learned that a contractor “accidentally” triggered the alarm while working on the system remotely. The contractor claimed the employee “failed to follow proper procedures.”