Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (16)
Similar to Local Crisis: Guadalupe Dam Collapse
Similar to Local Crisis: Guadalupe Dam Collapse (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Local Crisis: Guadalupe Dam Collapse
- 1. Guadalupe County Dam Crisis A Local Crisis Case Study by Tori Ford
- 4. Stakeholders and Actors ● County lake property-owners ● County lake business-owners ● Local businesses ● School district ● GBRA ● PLDA ● Guadalupe County Department of Justice Spokesperson: GBRA President and General Manager, Kevin Pattenson Also the ecosystem?!?! Also public safety?!?!?!
- 8. August 15, 2019 The press breaks the news of plans to drain 4 more county lakes and GBRA releases a dam safety video with kayakers breaking new safety precautions May 14, 2019 The dam at Lake Dunlap collapses August 13, 2019 Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority (GBRA) releases a report detailing the dam failure, what caused it, and recommending to close and drain the remaining regional lakes for dam updating
- 11. August 24, 2019
- 12. January 7, 2020 County judge orders GBRA to release documents about their legal responsibilities toward dam maintenance October 10, 2019 GBRA makes an agreement with Preserve Lake Dunlap Association (PLDA) to replace dams and create a new “water taxing district” December 2021 GBRA estimated date for the full installation of new Lake Dunlap dams IF new plan is voted in September 2020 Next trial to determine the fate of the “Great Drain”
- 13. The GBRA and Lake Dunlap Crisis Response
- 14. “The issue is that the GBRA, they have no money.”
- 15. GBRA’s Response to Lake Dunlap 1. Partner with PLDA 2. Host board meetings 3. Hire experts and engineers to evaluate the failed dam along with possible solutions 4. Draft policy action 5. Encourage two-way communication, collaboration, and understanding a. Clear misconceptions b. Invite Dunlap stakeholders to meetings c. Facilitate individual conversations between Patteson and local residents d. Prioritize transparency with new website
- 19. “My thing is, the other lakes are being stupid because they’re suing GBRA.”
- 21. Community Backlash ● Sandman: Moderate outrage, moderate hazard (stakeholder relations) ● GBRA held its ground in legal battles; told opponents to “stop policing” them ● Public Information/Persuasion Model of Communications
- 29. In conclusion...
- 30. Discussion
- 31. In what ways do local crises require different—or similar— communication tactics?
- 32. Sources
- 33. ● Don Ford, personal communication ● "Texas' Lake Dunlap Dam collapse caught on camera”: https://youtu.be/lXUt4H4Bh88 ● Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority. (15 August 2019). GBRA Dam Safety Video [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/rgr8N8ruDqs ● Fearn-Banks, Kathleen. (2017). "Chapter 1: Crisis Communications Today." Crisis Communications: A Casebook Approach. 5th edition. ● Sandman, P. (April 2003). Four kinds of risk communication. The Synergist (American Industrial Hygiene Association). ● https://www.expressnews.com/opinion/commentary/article/Why-GBRA-must-dewater-these-lakes- 14394319.php ● https://www.kens5.com/article/news/community/lake-dunlap-dam-fallout-continues-in-courtroom/273- 58da3e94-ae65-4f18-96db-373530965831 ● https://www.plda.org/ ● https://gbra.org/ ● https://gvlakes.com/
Editor's Notes
- Today, we’re going to get a little more local with our crisis case studies, more specifically, the Guadalupe County Dam Crisis.
- Our setting for this crisis is Lake Dunlap, which is located in New Braunfels, Texas, about 30 minutes south of Austin.
- Even more specifically, this is a local crisis that has impacted my own family. This is my family out on Lake Dunlap, which we call our summer getaway. This is my family, with my dad driving the boat, really just in peak form. I think it’s important to remember that crises, even big corporate ones, can affect real families.
- Before we talk about what happened, I should address all the factors at play here. You’ve got (list bullets)... and the county department of justice, who was a bit involuntarily pulled into this crisis, and I’ll explain why in a minute. Ecosystem: this was a crisis that involved a body of water, and that necessarily includes all the wildlife and organic makeup of that ecosystem. Depending on how you define stakeholders, I’d say nature would have an opinion about this crisis if given a voice. Also, this was a crisis of public safety, and human lives. And here is my dad’s take on the situation. I’m going to be using his Facebook posts alot; I think they’re hilarious, but they can also show us how local people were interpreting this event, and I think that’s valuable.
- Alright, so let’s talk about what happened.
- (start video). So this is Lake Dunlap on May 14, 2019. We aren’t going to watch this whole thing, I just really want you to see… this. Within the first 24 hours after the dam failure, 90% of the water in the lake was gone.
- And this is my dad’s hot take on the situation. And it really was very sad for a lot of families and business owners.
- But this is really where the crisis begins. I should mention there was another spill gate failure about 2 years prior at Lake Wood, but it really didn’t get that much attention. So the crisis as I define it started with Lake Dunlap. And it took 2-3 months for the GBRA to release a report detailing what caused it, but most importantly they issued an order to close all the other county lakes for commercial and private use, and also recommended that all the other county lakes be drained immediately to replace the aged dam infrastructure, since the remaining dams could also fail at any time. It did not take the press much time to get a hold of this, especially the part about the recommendations to drain the other lakes. This would be really detrimental to local business and the economy, so of course the press would cover it. But on the same day, the GBRA released this video called “Dam Safety”:
- We won’t watch the entirety of this either, but what I do want to point out is how this video is one, the most Texan video ever, but two, how this must look to other lake residents. Here they are just learning that their entire livelihoods are about to be turned upside down, and the GBRA releases this video basically pointing the finger back at them saying, “well if you wouldn’t break the rules....”
- And so here (click) is where the press coverage really started to take a turn for the worse, a couple of days after that video was released.
- And then, on my birthday last year, two groups of other county lake residents decided they were going to SUE the GBRA. They were NOT happy.
- And so the crisis has really split into two lanes, one dealing with crisis response for Lake Dunlap residents, and the other dealing with the other lake residents and them trying to stop the draining of the remaining lakes. So the rest of this timeline has a lot to do with the legal disputes, but there’s still hope and more drama yet to come. There’s a trial set to happen this September, and as for Lake Dunlap, there’s a plan to install a new dam by December 2021. Who knows if it’ll happen, but the GBRA has certainly set a plan with Lake Dunlap residents, and they even passed a policy to create a new taxing district to pay for it, as of earlier this month. I don’t know fully how it works, if you want to know more about it I’m sure my dad would talk your ear off.
- So I’m going to discuss the two different response tactics, because they really were two different situations, starting with Lake Dunlap.
- In the sage words of Don Ford, the issue really was that the GBRA didn’t have any money to pay for dam restoration. Again, I don’t know much about how they money flowed, but I do know that the money that the dams made didn’t actually go towards the dams, it more or less went into a pot that the GBRA used for other things. So they had to convince Lake Dunlap residents to pay for it, which is a challenge if there ever was one.
- In order to do this, they partnered with the PLDA, which is kinda like a homeowner’s association but for the lake residents that’s also been around for decades. So with thee PLDA, the GBRA hosted board meetings to discuss the options for moving forward, hired experts from the outside to conduct testing on the dams and make recommendations (maybe so they couldn’t be blamed, idk) and created that water taxing district and lobbied for it, pretty successfully I’d say since it was passed. They also encouraged two-way communication with Lake Dunlap residents; they had a website dedicated to the crisis, where they had a section to provide their defense for the common misconceptions, and there were a lot. They also invited Lake Dunlap residents to the meetings, and saved seats for them at the front of the rooms, which I thought was a thoughtful touch. Pattenson, the GBRA President, was also on the floor talking to people, including my dad. “Nice guy” is how my dad described him, so that’s actually a great compliment coming from my dad. The website was a great resource for residents to go to, especially if they missed a meeting or had a hard time understanding all the engineering lingo or what really happened to the dams.
- I brought in excellence theory because I think at least with Lake Dunlap residents, the GBRA did a wonderful job partnering with local organizations and making people feel heard and valued. I mean their branding was corny, and I’m pretty sure the presentation there is literally just the default template on Google slides, but this is small town Texas, so I think it was all very on-brand. And my dad was happy! Which is Don Ford isn’t happy, then no one is, so the GBRA gets a good grade here. (click) And Don Ford liked his own post, which I think is a very good sign.
- So now we’ll shift gears to talk about the other county lake residents, or the “homesteader people” as my dad likes to call them.
- So the news really exploded throughout the county, as seen by the long expose here in the San Antonio paper, even with it’s own big name, “the big drain.” As you can tell by the other lines, other lake residents were very upset with the whole thing.
- I think this very articulate quote from my dad just goes to show how outraged the other lakes were, and really unwilling to collaborate, or even to listen, to the GBRA.
- As you can see by some of the comments I’ve pulled off of that “great drain” article, people were certain that the GBRA was not only to blame for the dam failures, but fully responsible for fixing them. There were protests, legal suits, the whole gammit.
- And from what I could see, the GBRA really didn’t do much about this. According to Sandman’s four types of risk communication, the GBRA was in a stakeholder relations situation, which really requires two-way listening. But they held their ground, even in court. Their attorney told the lake residents to “stop policing” the GBRA, which as you can imagine, just brought down the wrath of more Texans than you could count. The GBRA really didn’t try to facilitate much dialogue outside of the board meetings, they were just like “here’s our plan and get ready. And also, stop climbing on the dams please,” and that was about it.
- I’m going to separate the grades into the two situations here, one for Lake Dunlap and the other for the remaining county lake residents.
- So in conclusion, people are adjusting to capital A capital River period. Life in New Braunfels. And if there’s anything we’ve learned, it’s that when Don Ford likes his own post again, surely there must be hope.