Dam Expensive

The dam at Marlette Lake is finally healthy, sound, and fit for public confidence, encouraging news for a structure that has been receiving more medical attention than some members of Congress. After $23 million in rehabilitation, the west side of Spooner Lake backcountry is open again, and people may once more walk the trails that have been forbidden to them since June 2025.

The water system was built in the 1870s to supply Virginia City, back when men solved engineering problems with shovels, lumber, muscle, and an alarming confidence that everything would work out. The old earthen dam has now been removed and replaced with a modern structure designed to withstand earthquakes, improve the spillway, and operate new discharge pipes and outlet valves.

In other words, the dam has been given everything except a television and a retirement plan.

The trouble began to reveal itself in 2017, when the Nevada Division of Water Resources discovered seepage during an inspection. Seepage is a charming little word until you learn that it may eventually become catastrophic. A faucet drips, a dam seeps, then catastrophically fails.

Civilization has invented increasingly polite words for increasingly unpleasant events.

The lake lowered about 20 feet during construction, leaving 20 feet of water behind. This must have been an interesting sight: a $23 million project standing beside a lake instructed to keep only enough water around to prove it was still a lake.

FEMA contributed $10 million through its Pre-Disaster Mitigation Fund, while Nevada supplied the rest. This is an excellent example of modern government thinking: spend millions to prevent a disaster that might happen someday, then congratulate itself when it doesn't happen because they spent the millions.

Now nature has been given the assignment of refilling the lake. Recharge averages about three feet a year and depends heavily upon winter snowpack. At that rate, the lake is apparently operating on a 20-year payment plan with no interest.

When conditions permit, the Nevada Department of Wildlife will stock the lake with rainbow and Lahontan cutthroat trout. After all this engineering, financing, construction, inspection, and mitigation, it is comforting to know that the final residents will be fish.

They were probably the only ones who never thought the dam needed fixing.