Evaluating The State Of Vermont's Dams

U.S. Army photo/Frank Fedele

Townshend Dam in the days after Tropical Storm Irene, when its pool was 78 percent full. Townshend Dam, along the West River, is part of a network of flood control projects in the Connecticut River Basin.

Among the lessons learned in Tropical Storm Irene is that the health of our dams is crucial, to the environment and to public safety. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report estimates that flood control dams prevented more than $30 million in damages across the state during Irene. But there are also cases where dams can cause more harm than good. We talk with Greg Hanlon, an hydraulic engineer for the US Army Corps of Engineers, and Roy Schiff, a water resource scientist and engineer at the firm Milone and MacBroom, about the state of Vermont's dams, how they work, and when it makes sense to remove them.

Also on the program, we talk to Deb Van Dyke, a Waitsfield nurse practitioner who has traveled to some of the most volatile parts of the world providing medical care through Doctors Without Borders. Van Dyke is also the founder and director of the Global Health Media Project, which has been working on a series of short films about cholera and maternal health care. The goal is to provide easily accessible education tools to people in developing countries about common public health and medical issues.

And we remember opera singer Patricia Neway, who died last week in Corinth. Neway originated the role of Mother Abbess in Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music in 1960, for which she won a Tony Award. But her career was launched in 1950 with her starring role in the opera The Consul. VPR's Sam Sanders remembers Neway's impact on opera, and on his own life.