Dams are not built within markets. Most of the time it's a public (i.e. state) mandate. Not surprised that states can't manage anything long term, they have no incentive to do so since officials run for short election periods.
They do when they need to pay insurance. Every year they defer maintenance is another year that insurance payments increase. This ensures they maintain things.
Of course governments need to require the insurance, but once they do insurance companies are good at figuring out risk. This is much easier for governments to do, than to actually allocate money to do the work when they are the owners. Somehow insurance payments are ignored in government budgeting, probably because they self-insurance and so there is no line item to look at.
When I was a student (many years ago) I used to work in the summers at a very large industrial maltings that supplied malt to a lot of the "quality" whisky brands.
Edit: Scotland produces about 1.3 billion bottles of whisky a year worth ~£5billion:
