Anna E. Normand updated (13 April 2023) this CRS report: 'Dam Safety Overview and the Federal Role'.
Click on the graphics to enlarge them. Great report. I will just post the summary and some of the graphics.
Summary
Dams provide various services, including flood control, hydroelectric power, recreation, navigation, and water supply, but they require maintenance, and sometimes rehabilitation and repair, to ensure public and economic safety. Dam failure or incidents can endanger lives and property, as well as result in loss of services provided by the dam. Federal government agencies reported owning 3% of the more than 91,000 dams listed in the National Inventory of Dams (NID), including some of the largest dams in the United States. (Thousands more dams fall outside the definition for NID inclusion.) The majority of NID-listed dams are owned by private entities, nonfederal governments, and public utilities. Although states have regulatory authority for over 71% of NID-listed dams, the federal government plays a key role in dam safety policies for both federal and nonfederal dams.
Congress has expressed interest in dam safety over several decades, often prompted by critical events such as the 2017 near failure of Oroville Dam’s spillway in California and the 2020 failure of two hydropower dams in Michigan. Dam failures in the 1970s that resulted in the loss of life and billions of dollars of property damage spurred Congress and the executive branch to establish the NID, the National Dam Safety Program (NDSP), and other federal activities regarding dams. These programs and activities have increased safety inspections, emergency planning, and dam rehabilitation and repair. Since the late 1990s, some federal and state dam safety programs have shifted from a standards-based approach to a risk-management approach. A risk-management approach seeks to mitigate failure of dams and related structures by conducting comprehensive inspections, enacting risk reduction measures, and prioritizing rehabilitation and repair of structures whose failure would pose the greatest threat to life and property.
Responsibility for dam safety is distributed among federal agencies, nonfederal agencies, and private dam owners. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) NDSP facilitates collaboration among these stakeholders. The National Dam Safety Program Act, as amended (33 U.S.C. §§467 et seq.), authorizes the NDSP at $13.4 million annually through FY2023. The federal government is directly responsible for maintaining the safety of federally owned dams. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation own 42% of federal dams, including many large dams. The remaining federal dams are owned by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Defense, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Tennessee Valley Authority, Department of Energy, International Boundary and Water Commission, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Congress has provided various authorities for these agencies to conduct dam safety activities, rehabilitation, and repair. Congress also has enacted legislation authorizing the federal government to regulate or rehabilitate and repair certain nonfederal dams. Other federal agencies regulate dams associated with hydropower projects, mining activities, and nuclear facilities and materials. Selected nonfederal dams may be eligible for rehabilitation and repair assistance from certain agency programs which are described further in the CRS Report R47383, Federal Assistance for Nonfederal Dam Safety.
Congress may consider oversight and legislation relating to dam safety in the larger framework of infrastructure improvements and risk management, or as an exclusive area of interest. Some of these issues are related to many of the nation’s dams and the federal agencies involved in their dam safety activities, while others are focused on specific dams or specific federal agencies. Selected issues include the following:
Federal agency effectiveness in addressing dam safety for federal and nonfederal dams, including implementing appropriations (e.g., recent influx of funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act [P.L. 117-58]) and determining the sufficient amount of future appropriations to provide for dam safety activities
Whether, and if so how, to incentivize and support federal and nonfederal agencies and dam owners to incorporate risk (e.g., risk-informed decision-making) in their dam safety practices and how effective these agency practices are at addressing the risk for communities surrounding and downstream of dams
Oversight of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s mandate to update probable maximum precipitation study methods to incorporate future climate conditions and of how federal and state agencies may use these methods to inform dam regulations and design
Tradeoffs between disclosing dam risk information for public awareness versus preventing individuals or groups seeking to compromise dams and their operating infrastructure for malicious purposes, including through cybersecurity attacks, from gaining this knowledge, and how to reduce the vulnerability of dams and their operating infrastructure from such potential attacks that could compromise dam safety.
More to come.
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