Nathan Denzin:
How did you get involved with these dams in the first place?

Dave Eggen:
Well, I grew up with these dams. I was a young teenager when they were built back in the '60s, and I followed their construction, and I saw how wonderfully they functioned. They've saved this community and this valley from flash flooding, though, for nearly 60 years.

Nathan Denzin:
When the initial plan, I guess, to take these out — the carrot on the stick that we were talking about — when that came up in a meeting, what was your first reaction and first thought?

Dave Eggen:
I was actually dumbfounded that there would even be a discussion about taking these dams out after what I just said about watching them function over the decades. I had to set about trying to understand where this came from, and I'm holding it in my hands here. Here's a $2 million bag full of 800 pages of NRCS information that was enacted following flooding events in 1918, or 2018 and 2019. The NRCS reached out, a red light went off with someone, and people were being contacted, and the initial result was that they were all going to get on the same page and start looking at ways to get out of the dam business after several of them breached, which I think were being maintained improperly. But when they kicked off this investigation, I think they knew what they wanted the outcome to look like. It only cost them $2 million to get to that point. And people like the conservationists now that are working for Vernon County, Monroe County, La Crosse County, they all received this and were told to sell this to your county board. These people haven't lived in this community. They haven't seen what these dams can do. I just think it was such a waste of money, because that $2 million would've repaired maybe eight to 10 dams that really don't need repair immediately, but it could have been put in a fund.