Investigative Voices

Examining Flood Mismanagement and Political Decisions

• Lidia LoPinto • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Could the recent flood disaster in Little Lake Harbor have been avoided? Join us as Lydia from Lydia's Bags, a chemical engineer with a keen eye for technical analysis, questions the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) decision-making processes. Lydia critiques the perceived mismanagement of dam levels under the new TVA board appointed by President Biden, expressing concern over the board's lack of engineering expertise. With insights backed by AI research and personal observations, Lydia challenges the narratives surrounding flood management and highlights the crucial role of scientific understanding in these events. 

The conversation doesn't stop at the flood's immediate aftermath. Delving into historical patterns of dam mismanagement in Appalachia, Lydia draws parallels to her personal struggles with FEMA during Hurricane Sandy. This episode also touches on the broader economic shifts impacting small businesses like hers, reflecting on how various administrations have influenced her entrepreneurial journey. Lydia's candid reflections offer a thought-provoking perspective on governmental inefficiency and the importance of informed decision-making. To stay updated on Lydia's research and insights, she invites listeners to follow her work on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Cloverleaf Publications.

Speaker 1:

Hi everybody. This is Lydia from Lydia's Bags, and if you've been following my page here on Facebook, which has my actual name, by the way, I am verified. I have a checkmark now so you can see who I am. I live in Little Lake Harbor. You'll know about my products, my books.

Speaker 1:

I've been posting a lot about the flood. As I said in my previous live video, I dedicated my small group of followers to post about the flood as I saw the videos come up. Now there were a couple of videos that Facebook said they would check by checkers fact checkers that this whole thing about the, the donations, was false. Okay, so I don't know if something is false or not. I just do people the kindness of sharing and I don't have time to check if it's false or not. However, I did check with FEMA and I know that they do things like this. They will sometimes take over areas or places where there are donations because they want to redistribute the materials in their own manner. Okay, so this might be true, because I know FEMA does these things regularly. I don't know, but I do know that most of the videos that I post have to do with the water, the rain and the dam openings.

Speaker 1:

And if you look at my thread, I have posted a few articles. One of them I posted on LinkedIn, simply because they have a better platform for posting articles, and I linked it with images and this was research that I did about the dams. Now the dam system is run by the Tennessee Valley Authority and if you look back at that and I did all the research I actually used AI to help me speed up the research, because it's very hard to get all this research done unless you have something like AI doing the research for you. And I found out that, yes, indeed, tva runs those dams that opened up during the storm, and you can see many of the residents saying that all the dams had opened up, and they heard it on the radio. Okay, so there's about two or three videos that say that. There are several videos that show a wall of water coming down, and yet there's no rain coming down on these people's yards, but there's a wall of water coming down, consistent with a dam opening up. And then, further, it says it shows that the water was very high coming down, showing that a dam was opened up, and that would be consistent with that. Consistent with that, I also posted videos of dam openings and how they open up the flaps to let the water down. I then further did research with the help of AI and I also googled it to find out that the TVA has been having problems for months with the actual dam levels. They've been saying that some of these dams were overfilled, and in one town they actually evacuated people before the dam would do any damage because they were afraid some of these dams would cave in.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now I continue my research and you will see an article on my page that is linked to LinkedIn that has the names of the people that were on the board of directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority. On the board of directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority, up until May of this year, there was a certain board of directors, some of them still over from Trump, and then in May, all of those people were out and Biden appointed his own board of directors for the TVA, because they want the directors to reflect the Biden Green New Deal policies, and so if you look at the and so if you look at the biographies of these directors, you'll find that they all are activists in various fields of the environment. Ok, none of them, unfortunately, seem to have an engineering degree, which is what I have I'm a chemical engineer and or any knowledge of hydraulics or dams. Uh, so they put these people in charge, basically the board of directors. There were three vacancies which I did not see they filled, so, as of this date, there are six people running the tva that are in the board of directors that were appointees of Biden.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now, you know, at that point I see articles that say that the actual dams have been overflowing for months, months. Okay, now, as an engineer, I know that if you have a dam that's overflowing for months and the rainy season is coming up, which comes every year, okay, that you should be taking steps to drain that dam, that lake behind it. And if you can't open the gates enough to let the water in at a controlled way for months, if you did it slowly instead of in one day, but you did it slowly you wouldn't flood all those people. You would do it and the river will be high for a while and you might succeed in draining those dams within a few months, so you could have enough room for the rain and, during the rainy season, to accumulate. Okay, if you can't do that because there's a problem, then you're going to have to figure out a way to drain those dams. Another way you may have to drain them, taking the water somewhere else, piping it elsewhere, okay, and those are projects that needed to be done a year ago and Biden put in those board of directors but they did nothing and there was three vacancies, which my article says that this led to mismanagement.

Speaker 1:

For months I see articles saying that they need to evacuate those people because of the dam. They haven't done it. So now they waited until a big storm which put out 30 inches of water onto the dams, plus all the water that rolls in from the mountains, and now they open up all the dams all at once and, of course, flood everybody. So them saying that it was the rain that did it is completely technically inaccurate. The problem was the opening of the dams during the storm, which they waited way too long to drain those dams. There was just no room to hold the rain.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so this is who's at fault for the damage that happened in Appalachia? There were only a couple of TikToks that mentioned the dam openings. The radio didn't mention it, and there were several victims that mentioned that the dams had to be opened, but nobody questioned why they had to open the dams during the storm. Nobody questions why these things, these types of storms, happen all the time. This idea that this was an unusual storm, that it never happened in Appalachia it did.

Speaker 1:

I went back and looked at the storms yes, it did, in 1947, there was a storm like this. There were always storm like this, there were always storms like this, except that the dams which were built during World War II were properly managed before and so they never ran into this problem in, I think, 1917 or something, before they put in these dams with the idea that the dams were there to prevent floods. Actually, the dams are a way to prevent floods. They use some hydroelectric power, but they were not installed for the power generation. It was installed to prevent flooding in that area from storms. So the fact that they opened up all the damn gates, damn D-A-M, at the same time during the storm shows to me that they were not prepared during the storm, shows to me that they were not prepared. They didn't do their work that they were supposed to do months before in managing the dams.

Speaker 1:

Now I also posted an article showing you what needs to be done to manage dams. There are a number of things. They need to properly drain the dams, and the way that they drain it is by doing predictive modeling, and they have to know when the rains to come, so that they're prepared and there's enough room to hold the rainwater before the storm. So this is a science that needs to happen. This needs to happen to manage the dams, and people have been complaining about the fact that the TVA has been unresponsive, and now I found out that Biden replaced all the board members with his appointees and that none of them seem to have any qualifications to run a dam system, which is a very important job.

Speaker 1:

So the last article I posted dealt with Congress just passing a bill to help the TVA rebuild the dams, or reinforce the dams, after there was a major disaster which knocked out that killed thousands of people and I've gotten word that it's thousands, it's not a couple hundred, they've gotten word that it's thousands, it's not a couple hundred and destroyed many homes and roads and bridges and everything else. Now, all of the sudden, they pass a bill to help the TVA rebuild the dams. Okay, that does not. Maybe that money should be going to the victims at this point, maybe the dams, I don't know. So it seems that the incompetence of the government in running because these are federally owned TVA is federally owned. Okay, to run a dam system which is meant to prevent floods created the flood due to lack of proper maintenance. Okay, and this is in all the articles. You can look up TVA. You can look up, you can Google different articles and different search engines and you will find out that this was an ongoing issue for a long time, that this was an ongoing issue for a long time.

Speaker 1:

So them blaming the storm for what happened is misinformation. If you're talking about misinformation and I'm not even talking about FEMA, because you all know what I went through with FEMA during Sandy, so I have no respect for these people I had no food, no water, no electric for weeks and weeks and weeks. I lost one home in Little Lake Harbor completely to the storm surge and I waited. I had to fight with them uploading I don't know gigabytes of information and being on the phone every day for two years to just get the money that I was due because I paid for flood insurance. So I wasn't getting any handouts here. I paid for that and they wouldn't give it to me.

Speaker 1:

But during Sandy itself. We asked for just a grand for the food we lost. We had no food. We asked for a grand just for the food we lost in the refrigerator and they wouldn't give it to us. I had no gas to get to work. My boss was not allowing me to not come in, so I took numerous trains. It took me hours to get to work.

Speaker 1:

I eventually lost that job because my boss went out of business due to the storm and we had no place to stay. The hotels were awful Talk about all the immigrants getting hotels. I didn't get any. And my dog worst of all, my dog was freezing. I had a little cockapoo, a red cockapoo, and my house was freezing. This was the middle of the winter, there was ice outside and we had no heat. I had to go to work, my husband had to go to work and our little doggie would stay there in a freezing apartment. So I begged a friend in Connecticut to please take me in because my dog was freezing and I didn't care about me. I cared about the dog and sure enough, she let us stay for two weeks Thank you, alexandra and I was able to commute from Connecticut to New York City for my job, from Connecticut to New York City for my job.

Speaker 1:

At no time did FEMA ever give me any money for hotels, for food or water nothing. During Sandy there were people whose houses not only got flooded in my neighborhood but caught fire at the same time, so they had fire and water in the same location. Fema was never in my neighborhood, never. They never came to Baldwin, new York. I never saw them. We all had to clean out ourselves.

Speaker 1:

In Little Lake Harbor we did have one contractor, who was an agent, who went through my house. That was completely gutted. It was completely gone. We took out the moldy stuff and put it outside. He said he was only able to give me $1,000 for the furniture and I said, no way. I said I paid flood insurance. He said, no, this is all you're going to get. He's a contractor. His job was to basically save FEMA money and to try to lowball all of the estimates.

Speaker 1:

Okay, it took me two years to fight to get the money back for the house for the amount that we had lost. And I did all my own estimates. I took all the pictures, I uploaded them. Then I uploaded them again. I had to send them a FedEx package with the printouts. I mean I had to give them all kinds of documents that, thank God, I still had, and this took two years of fighting every single day, on the phone, every day, until I got what I needed to get, which was mine.

Speaker 1:

So I didn't really have any real respect for OSHA. Their systems are antiquated. Their people are crooked At least this guy that came to my house. He was a total crook and they never gave me anything during the actual when I really needed it, when I was in real trouble. They never helped. So that's why I'm not going to go and lie about whether OSHA is doing something or not at Appalachia.

Speaker 1:

All I can go by is the videos that people are posting and I try to see if they're telling the truth or if they're trying to exaggerate. Sometimes I post it and then Facebook puts in like a little banner and says, oh no, this was misinformation or whatever. Well, you have a choice to look at it or not. It's up to you to decide. I do the best I can to vet those, but mostly I post videos by actual people that are there to tell you the story that you may not hear in the news.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so this is my post for today. You can look at my list of articles. I do a lot of good research, so I'm not making anything up. I go, I Google, I use AI to do my research. I put the links so you can go to the actual articles. A lot of them are from the TVA itself, from the Tennessee Valley Authority. They post everything so you can look in there. So everything that I post is well-researched. If you see any problems, let me know. I do the best I can to do articles that are well-researched to get you informed about what's going on. And you know my posts are.

Speaker 1:

Of course I am not a Democrat, so you can see that by my post. I don't pretend to be a Democrat, nor do I pretend to give them anything. I used to be an Obama person, believe it or not, and after what happened with Sandy and the treatment that I got, I realized that I wasn't going to go with the Democrats anymore. So that's why I switched parties. Not that I was ever a Democrat, I voted for Obama, but I was always an independent. I never believed in any party. But then I switched to Republican. With what happened to me with OSHA I'm sorry, fema, okay, so I was always a Trump person.

Speaker 1:

I was much better off when he got elected. As far as my economics, I was able to get enough work to make up for the losses for Sandy, and I think it was in 2016 because of the Trump policies that I was able to get more money and I was able to compensate for the losses. Then, when Biden took over my bags, business started dropping and, as of today, bags are not selling on eBay. And took over my bags, business started dropping and, as of today, bags are not selling on eBay. My books are selling better overseas actually, the books that I write and you know all the books I write because you see the posts all the time they're selling overseas, and I don't think this economy is very helpful to entrepreneurs, and so I'm still going to vote for Trump, and I really don't care about all the other stuff. I'm voting for the person that might get the economy going again. I'm still an independent, though, so you know I would vote for whoever has the best qualifications.

Speaker 1:

At this point, I don't think the current administration has our best interest in mind, so, and it doesn't matter who I vote for anyway. So, and it doesn't matter who I vote for anyway, what I am trying to tell you is the actual truth of what I found out about the floods Incompetence. I mean, god forbid that this was done on purpose. I don't think so. This was done due to incompetence. People got hurt because they didn't do their jobs with the dams, and that's what I wanted to put out to you. And people are starting to say it and, of course, there's going to be a lot of cover up and there's going to be a lot of denial, and there are still people saying I can't believe. People do not take science or engineering anymore. They're still saying that it was the actual storm that pushed the water in the river 20 feet. No, it was the water that came down from the dams. This is not a storm surge like in the ocean. This was a river in mountains. Okay, there were 3,000 feet above sea level and the water didn't all come from the rain, because the water went up 20 feet and there were only 30 inches of rain. So this was because those dams were already full. If you get nothing more from this video, the dams were already full. They had no choice but to open them or the dam was going to collapse, according to them, and that's why we had the flood.

Speaker 1:

Thank you very much and I hope you continue to follow my articles. I post these articles here on Facebook. I also post them on my page on, where I also post the books, which is Cloverleaf Publications, which is a page attached to my profile. I also post these same things occasionally on LinkedIn because they have a good blogging platform, so sometimes I link a LinkedIn article to my page. Follow my articles. I'm trying to give you well-researched, good content so you can continue to research and get the truth for yourself. Thank you.