KY mayor’s video on Dix Dam release was incorrect, caused panic. What happened?
The announcement caused a furor as the flood-swollen Kentucky River in Central and Northern Kentucky rose toward people’s homes:
Someone had accidentally opened 10 spillway gates at Dix Dam, which impounds Herrington Lake. Water was gushing out, and it was going to make flooding worse downstream on the Kentucky River.
“I wouldn’t expect you’ll literally see a wall of water, but you will see an extremely, extremely rapid rise in the water,” Carrollton Mayor Robb Adams said in a Facebook video Sunday afternoon.
The video sent some people “into this big panic mode,” said Tim Cammack, the deputy emergency manager in neighboring Owen County.
“We were absolutely slammed” with calls, many from people upset that their own local officials hadn’t warned them, Cammack said.
Except it wasn’t true.
So what happened? There are still some unanswered questions, but here’s what we know:
‘Things have changed drastically’
Days of heavy rain had caused flooding in many parts of Kentucky, with the water projected to reach near-record levels in some places heading into the weekend.
Sunday at 3 p.m., Adams went on Facebook with the dramatic announcement that a mistaken release of water at the dam many miles upstream was going to make the problem worse.
“Things have changed drastically, drastically,” he said.
Adams said the information had come from Kentucky Emergency Management, so it was solid and demanded urgent action, telling people along the river in Carroll County, where the Kentucky River meets the Ohio River, to evacuate immediately.
There was no accidental release of water from the Dix Dam, though.
LG&E and KU, which owns the dam, had planned the release to lower the level of Herrington Lake after days of heavy inflow, easing stress on the dam as part of its safety protocol.
“This was all just part of our normal operations,” said Liz Pratt, spokesperson for the utility.
Kentucky Utilities built the dam in the 1920s to produce power. It was the first hydroelectric dam in the state and the world’s largest rock-filled dam at the time.
The dam is rated as high-hazard structure because if it failed, it would cause deaths downstream, but it was in satisfactory condition during the last inspection in October 2024, according to the National Inventory of Dams.
The utility had notified officials in affected counties of the release on Friday at 5:30 p.m.
Henry County Judge-Executive Scott Bates, well down the river from the dam, confirmed he received the notice, which said the release was expected to have only a minimal impact on the water level in the Kentucky River.
The utility also notified the National Weather Service, which sent the information to a river forecast center, according to LG&E and KU.
That means the water coming out of the lake had been factored into the flooding projections, according to the utility and local officials, so it did not make flooding worse than forecast.
Within a few hours, Adams went back on Facebook and said he had received new information that the water release at Dix Dam was not an accident.
“Somewhere there was a miscommunication to us and that was not true,” he said. “My apologies, OK? We were passing along what we had at the time.”
LG&E and KU and at least one county official along the river also issued statements that the release had been planned.
‘It’s not always accurate’
It’s not entirely clear how the alleged miscommunication happened.
Adams told the Herald-Leader in an interview Tuesday that he had not listened to the 11 a.m. briefing Sunday where the bad information apparently originated.
Two people in emergency management listened to the briefing from Kentucky Emergency Management on a teleconference and then passed on information to him and others at the local emergency operations center afterward, Adams said.
He reiterated that the information he initially received was that the gates at Dix Dam had been opened accidentally.
“Where the breakdown was from Frankfort on up, I don’t know,” Adams said. “All I did was put out information that was relayed to me, false or not. Somebody does need to get to the bottom of it.”
Gov. Andy Beshear said during a news conference Monday that effort was underway.
“We’re working to get to the bottom of this one,” he said.
Beshear said state officials will talk with LG&E and KU to make sure there is direct communication between the state and the utility about planned water releases.
He also said Adams was only trying to help people by putting out the information as he understood it.
“You get information in an emergency, and you try to push it out,” the governor said. “It’s not always accurate, though you wish it was.
“But if you’re always erring on the side of protecting people, which I think he most certainly was, that’s the way we always want to err.”
This story was originally published April 8, 2025 at 11:36 AM.
