Welcome
The Dam Safety Coalition favors the creation of a federal funding program to repair the nation's unsafe dams.
Dams provide tremendous benefits to society but they also represent a public safety issue. A dam failure can result in severe loss of life, economic disaster and extensive environmental damage.
Dams are a vital part of our nation's infrastructure - providing drinking water, flood protection, renewable hydroelectric power, navigation, irrigation and recreation. These critical daily benefits are also inextricably linked to the potential harmful consequences of a dam failure.
The Need for a Dam Rehabilitation Program - It is estimated that $10.1 billion is needed to address the nation's most ciritcal dams. Needed repairs to publicly owned dams are estimated at $5.9 billion. The case for a national program to fix these dams summarized in the this brochure.
Breaking News --
July 29, 2009, The Press Democrat, Test Result Triggers Safety Inspection of Warm Springs Dam A team of experts called in by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began inspecting Warm Springs Dam Tuesday after a monitoring well showed an unusual increase in the water level at its base. The water level in one of a series of testing wells penetrating the earthen dam rose 14 feet in a week, the Corps said Tuesday. It is located near the base of the dam, about 700 feet from the top. Corps officials stressed that no other monitoring device — there are 194 of them — showed anything unusual and a chemical analysis showed the water came from groundwater, not water from the lake. Read the full story
June 28, 2009, The New York Times, Dams Are Thwarting Louisiana Marsh Restoration, Study Says Desperate to halt the erosion of Louisiana’s coast, officials there are talking about breaking Mississippi River levees south of New Orleans to restore the nourishing flow of muddy water into the state’s marshes. But in a new analysis, scientists at Louisiana State University say inland dams trap so much sediment that the river no longer carries enough to halt marsh loss, especially now that global warming is speeding a rise in sea levels. Read the full story
May 12, 2009, The Hillsboro Argus, Seismic Concerns Complicate Scoggins Dam Project The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is evaluating the safety of Scoggins Dam in light of scientists' increased understanding of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, the major fault line that runs off the Oregon Coast and the possibility of a 9.0 quake along that fault. Read the full story
