Barnsdall Mayor Provides Update Waxhoma Dam Status After Meeting With Experts

Progress is being made on repairing the Lake Waxhoma dam breach. 

Crews made a temporary fix after the dam first started gushing water two weeks ago, but it started leaking again this weekend. Osage County workers began filling in fractures in the dam's spillway with rock and gravel to stabilize it.

The work started after a meeting Wednesday morning between Barnsdall Mayor Johnny Kelley, the Army Corps of Engineers, and government leaders.

Kelley says the goal was to find a permanent fix for the dam.

“Try to figure out the best way to tackle this problem and steps we have to take to get the funding we need to fix it," Kelley said.

“I’ve been here since Saturday watching this thing play out and it’s been a pretty helpless feeling.”

Kelley put out a call for help this morning on Facebook - asking the residents of Barnsdall to call state leadership and bring the broken dam to their attention. Becky Fleming was one of the people who answered the mayor's call - and made some of her own.

“I said, ‘Hey this is where we’re at, we need some help, can you call on your colleagues to lend us a hand here in Barnsdall,'" she said.

Those efforts caught the attention of state representative Judd Strom, who Kelley says visited the dam this morning and pledged his support. Kelley says the spillway will likely need to be completely replaced. The Army Corps of Engineers says a siphon could temporarily keep pressure off the dam.

Solutions - and support like that is also a relief for Kelley.

“I feel like we’re going to get some help here and get this problem solved," Kelley said.

Mayor Kelley hopes that the work they get done today and the rest of the work they plan on doing will help keep the dam stable enough until they can do the final repair. There is no estimate yet on when repairs can start. There is no official estimate on cost but Kelley says it will likely be very expensive.