Edenville's Dam Owners Knew Where It Could Break. They Left It That Way.
Wendover Productions gets one important thing right: the Edenville Dam did not collapse because water simply poured over its top. It failed through static liquefaction, a sudden loss of strength in saturated soil. But the episode spends much of its investigation explaining inadequate spillways, expensive upgrades and aging infrastructure while missing a far more revealing story: the dam's owners had identified a dangerous weakness in the very section that eventually collapsed, developed a plan to address it, and never implemented that plan.
That is not a minor omission. It changes the story from one about an unfortunate collision between extreme weather and aging infrastructure into one involving a documented warning, an abandoned engineering solution and a failure to inform regulators.
The strongest evidence emerged in subsequent court proceedings. The original video deserves to be judged against the information available when it was produced, but the public record now tells a considerably more damning story.
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The forensic report told a different story
The five-member Independent Forensic Team, commissioned by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), published its final investigation in May 2022. Its findings were considerably more specific than the episode's emphasis on aging infrastructure.
The dam had not simply deteriorated with age. Its original construction deviated substantially from its engineering specifications:
- Sections of the embankment contained very loose, poorly compacted sand.
- The downstream slope at the failure location was steeper than the original design.
- The failed section had never received a proper stability analysis.
- Earlier soil investigations had repeatedly identified loose sand, but the available evidence was not adequately incorporated into subsequent safety assessments.
The team found that only two cross-sections of the approximately 6,000-foot embankment had undergone stability analysis. Neither was at the location that eventually failed.
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This matters because the team identified a practical remedy. Flattening the vulnerable slope or adding a supporting embankment, known as a buttress, would have reduced the forces acting on the loose soil. Similar modifications had already been performed elsewhere on Edenville Dam.
The report concluded that the owners could have afforded this work and that it would likely have prevented the collapse.
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The distinction is devastating to the episode's central framing. An $8 million spillway upgrade and a targeted repair to an unstable embankment were different engineering problems. Explaining why the owner could not afford the first does not explain why the second was not completed.
The forensic team described the failure as unforeseen, but not unforeseeable. That is a much more precise conclusion than suggesting that an extraordinary storm simply overwhelmed an old structure.
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The owner had identified the danger in 2010
The most revealing evidence emerged after Wendover published its video on September 19, 2023.
On October 6, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan granted the state's motion for summary judgment against Boyce Hydro and associated entities.
Court records established that Lee Mueller, who controlled Boyce Hydro, acknowledged that he had been concerned about the eastern embankment as early as 2010. He recalled that the top was too narrow and the slopes too steep.
More importantly, the company had commissioned an engineering design for a sheet-pile cutoff wall in November 2011. A subsequent 2012 design report proposed modifications intended to reinforce the dam and improve spillway capacity. The work was never implemented.
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The court found that Boyce knew about the dam's vulnerability and failed to inform Michigan's environmental regulator, EGLE, despite its legal obligation to disclose dangerous conditions. The defendants did not dispute those assertions.
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The court also recorded testimony from former general manager and engineer Frank Christie, who left the company in 2017 after becoming concerned about accumulating problems at Edenville and Sanford. Christie described Mueller pursuing other ventures, including a parking lot, pole barn, pond, marina, travel-trailer park and music festival while dam problems remained unresolved.
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There is an important qualification: the 2023 findings were made through summary judgment, with the defendants providing no contrary evidence, rather than following a fully contested trial on the engineering merits. But the court's findings are not mere speculation or an internet accusation. They form part of an actual judicial record.
The distinction between what was known internally and what was communicated to regulators is particularly important. The failure mechanism was unusual, but the owner had identified a vulnerability in the section that ultimately failed.
The $8 million explanation needs a qualification
Wendover's financial argument is not entirely wrong. The IFT examined financial documents supplied by Boyce Hydro, although it did not audit them. Those records indicated average annual revenue of approximately $2 million across four dams and average net income of $380,000 before certain longer-term improvement costs; after those costs, the figure fell to approximately $68,000. Some years were loss-making. Funding an $8 million comprehensive spillway upgrade was genuinely difficult.
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But that financial difficulty does not settle the question of whether the eastern embankment could have been reinforced.
The IFT specifically distinguished the expensive spillway improvements from affordable structural stabilization. Its conclusion was that the owners could have funded slope flattening or a supporting berm, and that similar work had already been completed elsewhere on the dam.
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There was also a separate engineering proposal: an auxiliary open-weir spillway, developed in 2016, with an estimated construction cost of $1.6 million. It was intended as an interim measure to reduce overtopping risk, not a complete solution to the dam's safety deficiencies. It was never completed.
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These distinctions matter. The episode presents the $8 million price tag as a central explanation for why the owners could not make the dam safe. It does not adequately explain that different engineering interventions addressed different hazards, or that some potentially decisive embankment repairs were within the owner's financial means.
The spillway problem was real. Its role in the collapse is less certain.
The gates really were restricted to approximately seven feet during the May 2020 flood. The IFT calculated that opening them to ten feet would have reduced the peak reservoir level by approximately one foot. Continuing the winter drawdown through May as well would have produced a reduction of approximately 1.4 feet. Neither scenario established with certainty that the embankment would have survived.
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This is where the episode needs greater precision.
The dam did not fail through overtopping. The spillway deficiency increased the danger of overtopping, but the actual collapse involved instability within the embankment. The IFT concluded that even a lower reservoir might only have delayed the failure rather than prevented it.
In April 2026, the Michigan Court of Claims relied on that same forensic conclusion when rejecting homeowners' claims against state regulators. It found insufficient evidence that lowering the authorized lake level would have prevented the collapse. That was a ruling about the state's legal responsibility, not an exoneration of Boyce Hydro.
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The video is right to investigate inadequate spillways. It is wrong to leave readers with the impression that this deficiency adequately explains why Edenville's eastern embankment actually gave way.
FERC's enforcement had consequences the episode leaves out
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission revoked Boyce's operating licence in September 2018 after decades of noncompliance. That was a serious enforcement decision, but the independent investigation identified an uncomfortable consequence: revocation removed electricity revenue and eliminated the ability to release additional water through the powerhouse.
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The powerhouse could discharge approximately 2,000 cubic feet per second. The IFT estimated that retaining this option might have lowered the reservoir by up to 0.8 feet during the May 2020 flood, although it could not establish that this would have prevented failure.
Its retrospective recommendation was that FERC should have continued working with Boyce and the incoming Four Lakes Task Force on a supervised improvement programme rather than revoking the licence. This would have preserved revenue for repairs and the additional discharge route.
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That is not an argument that FERC should have ignored decades of noncompliance. The commission had exhausted several enforcement options, and the IFT itself described revocation as its last resort. But the episode presents the decision without examining its unintended consequences.
The state and the dam owner must not be confused
A separate legal battle reached an important decision in April 2026. The Michigan Court of Claims rejected property owners' claims against EGLE and the Department of Natural Resources, finding that the state did not own or operate Edenville Dam and had not abused its regulatory authority.
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The court also found that no previous engineering report had warned state regulators that the embankment was vulnerable to static liquefaction. This is significant because the 2023 federal proceedings had established that Boyce possessed internal information about the eastern embankment's vulnerability without disclosing it to EGLE.
The homeowners' lawyers announced an appeal in May 2026. The separate question of state liability therefore remains distinct from the established federal findings against Boyce.
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There is also an important scientific qualification. The IFT declined to attribute the disaster to one individual or institution, identifying a century-long failure involving construction, engineering, financing, regulation and maintenance. That systemic conclusion does not erase the later judicial findings about Boyce's conduct.
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What Wendover should have told its audience
There is a fairness issue worth acknowledging. Wendover published its video on September 19, 2023, seventeen days before the federal court issued its October 6 ruling. The newly disclosed internal correspondence and subsequent legal findings were not available when the video appeared.
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However, the independent forensic report had been publicly available since May 2022, and the video's own reference list included it. Its findings about poor original construction, loose sand, steep slopes, inadequate geotechnical investigation and affordable stabilization work were already available.
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The strongest criticism, therefore, is not that Wendover failed to predict a future court ruling. It is that the episode used the forensic investigation without giving its most important engineering findings sufficient weight.
The narrator's description of the disaster as an outcome made inevitable by inadequate upkeep is particularly problematic. The forensic team called the failure foreseeable and preventable, but also explained that several interacting conditions produced it. The distinction matters: preventable does not mean inevitable.
Verdict
Wendover's broader warning about aging dams, private ownership, financial incentives and increasingly severe floods deserves serious attention. The Edenville disaster genuinely illustrates those dangers.
But its account leaves readers with an incomplete explanation of the actual collapse.
The dam was poorly constructed. Its most vulnerable section escaped comprehensive stability analysis. Its owner had identified a weakness, developed a potential engineering solution and failed to implement it. The company also failed to disclose its concerns to state regulators.
The $8 million spillway problem was real. It was not the entire engineering problem, and it was not the only available route to improving safety.
Edenville was not simply an old dam defeated by an extraordinary storm. It was a structurally vulnerable dam whose owner had a warning that never reached the regulator, and whose eventual failure destroyed thousands of people's homes and livelihoods.
That is the story worth telling. A general warning about aging dams is useful. An investigation into how a known weakness survived for a decade, why a proposed repair was abandoned, and how the people responsible escaped meaningful intervention is considerably more valuable.
References
1. The Troubling Danger of Dams — Wendover Productions, September 19, 2023. Original video. The work under review and its published source list.
2. Independent Forensic Team: Investigation of Failures of Edenville and Sanford Dams — Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, May 5, 2022. Official FERC report page. The central engineering investigation, including original construction defects, missing stability analyses, affordable remediation and the consequences of regulatory decisions.
3. Order Granting Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment — U.S. District Court, Western District of Michigan, October 6, 2023. Court order. Establishes Boyce's ownership, statutory violations, knowledge of the embankment vulnerability and failure to notify EGLE.
4. Motion for Summary Judgment with Exhibits — Michigan Department of Attorney General, May 25, 2023. Court filing and exhibits. Contains Mueller's testimony, the engineering proposals and Dr. Scott Olson's assessment of the proposed cutoff wall and alternative stabilization measures. This is the state's litigation submission, not an independent forensic finding.
5. Order Resolving Motion for Default Judgment — U.S. District Court, Western District of Michigan, November 27, 2023. Court order. Records the $119,825,000 default judgment against Lee Mueller and the bankruptcy circumstances surrounding the proceedings.
6. Opinion and Order on Liability — Michigan Court of Claims, April 23, 2026. Full judicial opinion. Explains why the court rejected homeowners' inverse-condemnation claims against Michigan state agencies, including its findings about regulatory authority, water levels and uncertainty surrounding static liquefaction.
7. Attorney Plans to Appeal Edenville Dam Ruling — WNEM, May 19, 2026. News report. Documents the property owners' intention to challenge the Court of Claims decision.