Clay, sandbags added to dam protecting town

? A convoy of trucks, excavators, bulldozers and backhoes moved in to fortify a seeping dam Thursday in eastern North Dakota as engineers and National Guard troops worked to save a tiny town that would flood if the dam fails.

Water was flowing like a miniature waterfall around a corner of the earthen Clausen Springs Dam, which protects the town of Kathryn, downhill and about six miles east. The water was eating through walls of the grass-lined spillway built to handle the extra water volume along a tributary of the flooding Sheyenne River.

If the dam fails, state Water Commission engineer Bruce Engelhardt said, “you’d have a large pulse of water going downstream.”

Kathryn’s 55 residents evacuated on Wednesday. The town was mostly deserted except for a handful of National Guard soldiers, surveyors and heavy equipment parked on Main Street.