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Comment by atdt | Hacker News Reader

> The dam was designed by a Swiss firm of consultants and built by a German-Italian consortium in 1984. Water began seeping through in 1986, when it became apparent that the geological issues were worse than the consultants had predicted.

I doubt that this was an innocent failure on their part. There was a huge financial incentive for these firms to find some way to validate this project.

Successive foreign consultants warned about the risk of building this dam on water-soluble bedrock. The risk was not subtle.

The planning documents for this dam should be scrutinized very closely for evidence of omission or manipulation of data, and the firms involved should be investigated. And if they are found culpable, they should participate in the costs of shoring up the dam. They have played a part in this mess.

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Judging by the Wikipedia entry[0], engineers did warn of it and propose a solution, but it would have slowed construction.

> Because the dam was constructed on a foundation of soluble gypsum, the engineers recommended the implementation of a grout curtain within the foundation before the superstructure was built. Instead, to speed construction of the dam, engineers installed a grouting gallery that would allow continuous grouting of the dam's foundation in order to promote stability.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam#Instability_and_reme...

And of course the backup solution has worked for 30 years, it is only failing now because the war has made the availability of workers and cement scarce. As I read through some of the pages on the this it seems like the "grouting gallery" would eventually have created the seal necessary.

So I get that it was not the choice one would use in hindsight, I can also see how people at the time weren't thinking "Well what happens if the government is overthrown and we're in civil war and can't do the grouting?" No, doubt if that came up someone said "Well if that happens we'll have worse problems than keeping this dam fixed! har har har." (as you can tell I really dislike it when people use that as an excuse for allowing technical debt to be created)

Also, back then, Saddam Hussein was an effective leader who kept his people in control, and Iraq was one of U.S.'s staunchest allies, it would have been hard to imagine U.S. would be the invaders that would create the power vacuum for rebels launch a civil war.

"Well what happens if we get invaded?"

"Not going to happen while we're U.S.'s best buddies."

"What about a rebellion?"

"With Saddam Hussein? Impossible. Iraq is a stable country."

> Iraq was one of U.S.'s staunches

That's quite an exaggeration. Iraq and the United States didn't even have diplomatic relations from 1967 to 1983. The U.S. did help Iraq when it looked like it was going to lose the war it started with Iran, but it was mostly intelligence aid since Congress refused to lift the arms embargo against Iraq.

Mosul Dam wasn't completed till 1986, and 1983-1986 is the period of time where Mosul Dam was being constructed, and when U.S.-Iraq relations were at their most friendly.

I just don't understand why you assume that the risks were not disclosed to the government. In my eyes, it's way more likely that the government decided to go ahead anyway. This was one of Saddam Hussein's prestige projects - telling him that it couldn't be done could've been fatal.

Isn't that a very good reason for not telling the truth to government?

Not really. That's a very good reason for going ahead when told to go ahead (instead of the ethical refusal to go through with the project).

One possibility is that a lot of people did tell the truth to the government, but the government kept asking more questions until it got the answer it wanted. There's always somebody willing to be paid to do that, and it isn't necessarily an indictment against a profession that it doesn't have literally 100% compliance to some ethical standard, on the grounds that I don't tend to indict entire professional fields for failing to accomplish the literally impossible.

>> There's always somebody willing to be paid to do that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1m-AEWMRVo

If those firms knew if the extreme risks then they should have decided not to accept the work!

I think it's pretty much a given that Sadaam Hussein, even back then, was a dictator who wouldn't necessarily put the safety of his people first.

I do not think that because he was a dictator he would not care at all.

Probably, he did not want to destroy Mosul and all its people. And even if this did not worry him, taking into account that he was doing this for publicity (either internal or international), he would not have wanted the dam to fail and kill thousands of people.

Yes, if he wanted to kill all the people of Mosul, I'm sure there would have been a lot things that could have been done for much cheaper than building a dam, and maintaining it for 30 years.

Bad does not equal stupid.

Iraq was relatively friendly with the US up until its invasion of Kuwait. We liked Saddam back when his main thing was fighting the Ayatollah.

While Saddam Hussein may not have been a friend of human rights I doubt he would have had European engineers killed for declining to work on his project.

He might have killed the people who reported to him, who in turn did everything to make that project happen, future cost and risk be damned.

"To understand his tantrum one must understand the kinship he feels with the great men of history, with history itself. Lack of reverence for an image of Copernicus might suggest a lack of reverence for Saddam."

From : http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/tales-of...

Dictators are violent, not stupid. They understand risks, and make decisions like any other leader.

Most dictators tend to behave in ways that doesn't exactly encourage their minions to be open and honest with them - the unhappy outcome of the 1937 Census in the Soviet Union being a good example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_%281937%29

I think it would have been a foolishly courageous engineer who told Saddam that his dam project wasn't going to work...

>>I think it would have been a foolishly courageous engineer who told Saddam that his dam project wasn't going to work...

That isn't how it works. You don't just walk up to the dictator and troll him/her in the face about their project.

You discuss engineering merits/demerits, risks/advantages make a brief conclusion and leave it there. You leave the decision to the them. Its a totally different thing for them to neglect all of that and continue with their will.

But a good engineer would talk on the project's merit instead of talking about the dictators foolishness on the project.

If the ego of the person in command is dependent on a certain outcome, evidence of that outcome's impossibility will seldom be met with rational thought.

From the linked Atlantic article:

> Samarai had detailed evidence to back up his views—photographs, news reports, numbers. The Iraqis could expect nothing more than swift defeat, and the threat that Iran would take advantage of their weakness by invading from the north.

And Saddam's response?

>To Samarai's surprise, Saddam did not seem angry with him for delivering this bad news. In fact, he acted appreciative that Samarai had given it to him straight. "I trust you, and that's your opinion," he said. "You are a trustworthy person, an honorable person."

Saddam didn't listen to him, but he also certainly didn't punish him for giving him the truth.

I'm reluctant to accept the caricature of evil dictators who have a "kill now" button on their desk for anyone who tells them something they don't like. I don't believe anything could get done that way in the real world.

Certainly the census you're referring to is a sad example of political denial, but it doesn't say anyone was killed (just imprisoned, and while prison isn't a lot of fun, it's a far cry from execution) and my guess would be that the article glosses over a lot of detail, like meetings with Stalin where he said "Hmm, I don't think these results are gonna work, they're very politically inconvenient and must not represent reality. Fix it. Let me know if you can't, and I'll find someone who can." The statisticians failed to "fix" it and failed to inform Stalin that he needed to find someone else to conduct the manipulation he sought.

I understand that statisticians with integrity would decline the responsibility to change the numbers (though statisticians with a sense of self-preservation would resign rather than release accurate details), but numbers on paper are a much different ballgame than "this structure will literally fall apart and kill millions of people when it does".

Reports and studies are manipulated to fit an agenda constantly because they're so easy to manipulate. This happens all the time now and surely it happened all the time in the past. The nice thing about construction is that you can't manipulate the outcome. Something either stands or it doesn't, regardless of human opinion, threats, or insistence.

Look up Christopher Hitchen's lecture on how Saddam Hussein consolidated power in his Baathist purge of ~1979.

Step 1: Randomly select a large portion of the assembled party as enemies of the state / party.

Step 2: Enlist the remaining party members to execute the first.

Step 3: ???

Step 4: Profit!

It's a formula even more twisted than Hitler and Stalin.

Nine minutes: https://youtu.be/CR1X3zV6X5Y

So, crazy idea (and completely inapplicable here, because dictatorship). Is there any government in the word that has an empowered "science" branch of government as a check and balance?

I'm not suggesting science is apolitical, but I feel like there's some merit to "We wanted to build a broken dam because {political considerations}, but the {science branch} vetoed it."

Kind of like a Supreme Court, except informed by scientific knowledge rather than law.

That's an interesting thought. I believe the EPA, FDA, OSHA, etc, are supposed to be the quality control science branches of the government. But instead of preventative maintenance, they just dole out fines after some violation.

The problem is that these organizations are headed by appointed politicians. And I've heard in the EPA at least there's an institutional boundaries between researchers (who do science) and administrators (who make decisions). I can try and dig up a citatation if you're interested, but my impression was scientists researchers were encouraged not to become involved in policy decisions.

In practice, the administrative agency apparatus works this way in the US. Projects go through things like environmental impact assessments, unless they're explicitly exempted. Of course, calling it a "science branch" is wildly optimistic; even theoretically objective assessments are skewed towards the favored result.

I wish! Though implementation would be tricky and might heavily politicize science in a bad way (as opposed to a good way; which could also happen). The closest I've seen anywhere to that is in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy.

Here's an excerpt from the "Martian Constitution" in the accompanying book "The Martians": """All laws passed by the congress shall also be subject to review by the constitutional and environmental courts, and a veto by these courts cannot be overridden, but shall be grounds for rewriting the law if the congress sees fit, after which the process of passing the law shall begin again."""

I found the rest here: http://pastebin.com/YeR74Yyb

Good find. I remember the constitution they hammered out in the books was interesting, as there was a lot of Aldo Leopold "think like a mountain" stuff.

(Of course, in the book, they've discovered a genetic repair mechanism that effectively makes people immortal, so I suppose it's still self interest)

It's not necessarily a faulty design. It simply requires maintenance that's not happening just like you car engine needs oil and you need to keep swapping that oil out after a while.

ex: A spent fuel pool is actually really simple and 'safe' just add water and keep cool. That does not mean you can walk away and not touch one for a year and expect everything to be ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool

Yes, but it's not "fail-safe". Building a massive dam above a million person flood plain, that requires continuous aggressive maintenance seems short sighted at best.

Dictatorships are not known for wise decisions.

This is one reason why "skin in the game" (to use Taleb's phrase) and social solidarity (to use mine) is so important in economic matters.

During my libertarian days, I used to mock the folks that suggested tariffs and favoring local companies in infrastructure projects were good ideas. I now regret giving so little thought to their arguments.

Wouldn't this apply to most dams around the world? Designed, constructed by foreigners?

Yes. Maybe there is evidence of manipulation of data , but who will bring the Italian/Swiss/German companies to justice ? Iraq ? US? EU?

This happened 30 years ago, some people might not even be alive..

30 years is nothing in infrastructure terms, if the companies still have money in the bank, and they are guilty of something then of course they should pay, that's the business they chose to be in!

Bhopal, event happened in 1984, some guilty verdicts delivered and sentences passed in 2010.

After more than 30 years the statutes of limitations would hinder such investigations.

Really? Details please.

>atdt

Now there's a name I haven't heard in a very long time...

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