Government agencies are blocking Floridians from knowing if they are at risk from the state’s aging dams, and are asking WUFT News to pay tall fees to find out.
The University of Florida’s journalism department has a long history of working with government agencies to obtain public records for student reporting. But that hasn’t been the case in a year-long project evaluating the risk of high-hazard dams — those that could cause death and extreme flooding in the case of a failure .
When Hurricane Helene cut a path of destruction through the southeast U.S., North Carolina’s Lake Lure overflowed, causing panicked residents to evacuate. The dam held, but state officials say they need $750 million to ensure equity in dam safety statewide.
SPECIAL REPORT: Dam Love Affair
But Floridians don’t have critical records pertaining to the condition of the state’s dams, and how well-prepared emergency managers are for a possible disaster. Neither the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) nor the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have complied with WUFT News’ request for safety assessments for the state’s high-hazard dams, as well as so-called emergency action plans for every Florida dam.
Florida is one of 13 states that doesn’t require emergency action plans for its high-hazard dams, blocking insights into how well-prepared the state is for a failure and identifying residential areas prone to intense floods.
Though both agencies have had over a year to comply with Florida’s open records law, the Army Corps never located the records. In December 2023, the Army Corps said it had a backlog of requests due to Hurricane Ian.
“The agencies are winning,” said Gary Green, president of the Student Press Law Center. “We must find a way to push back and hold them accountable for the information they're required to give us by law.”
DEP did find the records, but has since refused to lower what is one of the highest fees a University of Florida student journalist has ever been quoted: $1,665.
A portion of the price, $615, represents 28 hours of work to locate these records that should be easily available electronically. The rest is for redaction of sensitive photos, diagrams and schematics that could pose a threat to national security, if made public.
“Our odds of getting killed by a dam failing are greater than a dam being blown up by a terrorist,” said David Cuillier, director of UF’s Brechner Center for Freedom of Information. “It's incumbent on the government to put people at ease and make sure they know what’s around them.”
The refusal to waive records so clearly in the public interest tracks a national issue where journalists — especially student journalists — aren’t taken seriously when requesting public records, Cuillier said.
Charging high fees makes vital public records inaccessible to citizens who want to understand what’s happening in their own communities, legal fellow Virginia Hamrick said. At Tulane University’s First Amendment Law Clinic, Hamrick works with citizens who are denied access to public records.
The federal government— and over half of U.S. states — have some provision that can waive fees if records are determined to be in the public interest. Florida has no such provision, though nothing prevents the state or local governments from adopting fee waivers. According to Hamrick’s research, a fee waiver would have little effect on Florida municipalities.
Yet even in states with fee waivers, Hamrick said, requesters are still often faced with sky-high prices for public records. Many states have provisions that allow them to simply deny a fee waiver, or have legal loopholes to charge requesters anyway.
“If you don't have the knowledge of how to push back, or you don't have the resources to hire an attorney and challenge the high fee as an unreasonable fee, you're just stuck with that invoice,” Hamrick said.
In many cases, that invoice can be thousands of dollars. Some states, like Hamrick’s Louisiana, don’t charge for the labor cost of retrieving records because records employees are already paid by the state. Florida does — as seen in the $615 labor cost the state charged WUFT News.
This leaves citizens with a choice, Hamrick said. They can either pay thousands of dollars for public records, or be left in the dark by what’s happening in their own backyard.
In the tiny North Florida town of Welaka in Putnam County, a high-hazard dam looms in residents’ backyards. Welaka is nestled where the Ocklawaha River flows into the St. Johns River, and is the first town downstream of the Rodman Reservoir, a controversial high-hazard dam.
Each time a hurricane barrels toward Florida, Welaka officials prepare for the worst.
Before each hurricane, substantial amounts of water have to be released from the reservoir to protect from a potential breach, Welaka Mayor Jessica Finch said. While Finch already fears Rodman may one day fail, those concerns are heightened by the uptick in major hurricanes.
During Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Welaka saw weeks of prolonged flooding, Finch said. The flooding cut residents off from the town’s sewer system for up to two weeks, and Finch said it wouldn’t have been as severe without the water released from Rodman.
“There’s billions of gallons of water behind that dam,” Finch said. “[Removing the dam] would certainly improve our situation in Welaka.”
Since Rodman was reclassified as a high-hazard dam in 2021, the dam has not received a full inspection from the FDEP, Finch said.
In 2023, a man threatened to bomb the Rodman dam. While the threat turned out to be false, the emergency revealed that Welaka officials would have less than an hour to evacuate the roughly 500 properties in the town’s flood zone, Finch said.
Welaka, which is “ground zero” for a Rodman breach, would be inundated with feet of water, Finch said. The destruction could lead to loss of life, and cause millions of dollars in damage.
Finch hopes that Rodman will eventually be taken down, and Welaka’s future flooding will be reduced to a manageable level. She previously requested a copy of Rodman’s emergency action plan from the state, but the document she received was too heavily redacted to be of any use.
“I don’t want to scare people,” Finch said. “But… I don’t like our residents being at the base of this.”
To pay the FDEP for access to dam safety records, WUFT News will use funds donated to the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. These funds have been specifically designated to pay for public records and safeguard the college’s right to the First Amendment and freedom of information.
This story is part of a special project investigating dam safety in Florida from the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, supported by the Florida Climate Institute.
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