LAKE OF THE WOODS isn't exactly New Orleans, and hurricanes like Katrina don't come along very often. Still, the water-oriented Orange County community must do what it can to prevent loss of life and property due to a dam breach. Even if the fix is costly.

Wasn't that the lesson learned from the 2005 Gulf Coast disaster? Experts knew the levees around New Orleans could fail in a big storm, allowing the city to flood. Nothing was done, and Hurricane Katrina turned the Big Easy into a big punch bowl.

Word that Veterans Memorial Dam at Lake of the Woods is deficient isn't exactly news. The dam, built in the late 1960s, was inspected 10 years later by the Army Corps of Engineers, which classified it as an "intermediate-size, high-hazard structure." The dam's spillway could accommodate only 67 percent of the recommended capacity, noted the 1979 report.

In 1987, the state Soil and Water Conservation Board issued a conditional permit, noting the structure's failings, and two years after that, the Lake of the Woods Association said it would fix the problem.

Since then, LOWA and the state have been throwing that fix back and forth like a hot potato. Twice LOWA's engineer pleaded for time to figure out a reasonable solution, and twice the SWCB reclassified the dam to accommodate that request--creating a 12-year delay. More stalls followed: LOWA even lobbied to get the state regulations regarding dams rewritten to avoid building an expensive new spillway. It was successful after a fashion--the regs were revised, but LOW didn't benefit from the revision.

Now, 30 years after the Corps of Engineers first noted the deficiency, LOWA has finally agreed to bite the bullet and build a new spillway at a cost of $5.6 million. Let's just say that's a tad more than if it had complied when the deficit was originally noted. Now, some fancy footwork may be required to find financing. Regardless, the fix has to happen.

The dam, one of two owned by LOWA, is classified as "high hazard" because a failure would result in a probable loss of life and extensive property damage to the nine homes and numerous other structures downstream. Granted, it would take an extraordinary weather event to endanger the dam, but Katrinas happen, even here in Virginia.

In 1995, torrential rains caused Timberlake Dam in Campbell County to fail, killing two people and causing extensive property damage. And in 1999, Hurricane Floyd, which dumped 24 inches of rain in Franklin in 30 hours, caused a dozen dams in eastern Virginia to give way.

The law is clear: It's the responsibility of dam owners to ensure they comply with state regulations. Lake of the Woods has had a 30-year stay of execution. Now it's time to dig deep and fix the dam.