Objective

To determine if the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is adequately regulating dam owners across the State to ensure their compliance with safety requirements. This audit covered the period from January 2020 through October 2024.

About the Program

Hundreds of dam failures have occurred throughout U.S. history, causing immense property and environmental damage and ending thousands of lives. As the nation’s dams age and the population increases, the potential for deadly dam failures grows. Dam failures not only pose risks to public safety, but they can also cause millions of dollars in damage and can result in the impairment of many other infrastructure systems, such as roads, bridges, and water systems. Dam failures are most likely to happen due to overtopping (caused by water spilling over the top of a dam), foundation defects, cracking, inadequate maintenance and upkeep, and piping (when seepage through a dam is not properly filtered and soil particles form sink holes in the dam). When a dam fails, resources must be devoted to the prevention and treatment of public health risks as well as the resulting structural consequences. DEC’s mission is to conserve, improve, and protect New York’s natural resources and environment and to prevent, abate, and control water, land, and air pollution, in order to enhance the health, safety, and welfare of the people of the State and their overall economic and social well-being. To protect people against loss of life and property from flooding and dam failure, DEC is entrusted with the regulatory power over approximately 6,500 dams located throughout the State.

Dams are owned and operated by the State, private parties, or local municipalities, and the State’s Environmental Conservation Law requires dam owners to operate and maintain dams in a safe condition at all times. Dam Safety Regulations (Regulations) describe dam owners’ and DEC’s responsibilities for several areas, such as permitting, construction, maintenance, repairs, inspections, record keeping, and other requirements necessary to safeguard life, property, or natural resources. Most of these requirements apply only to dams or other structures that impound waters and that pose, in the event of failure, a threat of personal injury or substantial property or natural resource damage.

DEC may assign hazard classifications based on factors such as physical structure and location of the dam, potential for loss of life, damage to natural resources, and access to emergency services. Hazard Class B and C dams pose the greatest risks in the event of dam failure; therefore, owners of such dams are required to submit certain documentation to DEC for review, including an Emergency Action Plan (Emergency Plan), Annual Certification, and Engineering Assessment. Emergency Plans are for use in the event of a developing dam failure or other uncontrolled release of stored water. The purpose of an Emergency Plan is to mitigate a developing condition and to provide notifications/warnings and/or evacuations to reduce the threat to downstream lives, property, roads, utilities, and other impacted areas. Annual certifications are an attestation by the dam owner that certain requirements under the Regulations have been met and contain details about the dam, such as the hazard classification, location of the dam and related infrastructure, and implementation of the dam’s Inspection and Maintenance Plan. The Engineering Assessment must be performed by a professional engineer and include, among other things, a complete safety inspection, evaluation of the dam, and conclusions as to whether the dam is in a safe condition.

Key Findings

While DEC actively conducts inspections of Hazard Class B and C dams in the State and has worked to assign condition ratings in alignment with changes in Regulations, we identified areas where DEC can make improvements regulating dams in the State to help ensure dam owner compliance with Regulations so that they meet safety standards to protect people against loss of life and property from flooding and dam failure. Specific areas include increasing compliance and improving enforcement against those dam owners that fail to submit required documentation to DEC. For example:

• Emergency Plans
  • 158 of 843 (19%) dams, including 153 of 505 Hazard Class B dams and five of 338 (1.5%) Hazard Class C dams, did not have an Emergency Plan on file with DEC.
  • 456 of the 685 (67%) dams that had an Emergency Plan did not have a recent annual update on file—28 (6%) did not have an annual update filed within the past 10 years.
• Engineering Assessments
  • 278 of 843 (33%) dams, including 249 of 505 Hazard Class B dams and 29 of 338 (8.5%) Hazard Class C dams, did not have an Engineering Assessment on file.
  • 86 of the 565 (15%) dams with an Engineering Assessment on file did not have an up-to-date assessment prepared and submitted to DEC within the last 10 years.
• Annual Certifications
  • 115 of 843 (14%) dams, including 110 of 505 (22%) Hazard Class B dams and five of 338 (1.5%) Hazard Class C dams, did not have any Annual Certification on file.
  • 248 of the 728 (34%) dams with at least one Annual Certification on file did not have a recent annual certification—43 (17%) did not have an Annual Certification filed within the last 10 years.

The Regulations require that dam owners prepare and submit Emergency Plans, Engineering Assessments, and Annual Certifications to DEC periodically. These are important tools DEC uses to identify deficiencies and corrective actions and provide DEC with the ability to review dam owner’s emergency response procedures—each of which is necessary to help ensure adequate regulation and safety of dams in the State. However, DEC’s current enforcement procedures do not include steps to act against owners that do not comply with these regulatory requirements.

Although DEC implemented a process to assign condition ratings to Hazard Class B and C dams (indicating the condition of a dam based on structural safety), as of March 2024, 220 of the 843 (26%) dams have not been assigned a rating. Although assigning condition ratings is not a prerequisite to enforcement, it better enables DEC’s efforts to implement enforcement actions because certain condition ratings require the dam owner to act. For example, a condition rating of unsafe requires immediate action to lower or drain the reservoir to reduce or eliminate the potential for a dam failure. Lastly, DEC could improve the timeliness of inspections and establish time frames for the completion of inspection reports to ensure that inspection results are communicated timely.

Key Recommendation

• Improve regulation of dam owners in New York State, which may include but not be limited to:
  • Completing and implementing enforcement procedures for dam owners that fail to operate and maintain a dam in a safe condition and fail to submit required documents to DEC as necessary.
  • Assigning condition ratings to Hazard Class B and C dams and updating DEC’s database accordingly.
  • Increasing the number of timely inspections in alignment with DEC’s goals for Hazard Class B and C dams.
  • Establishing time frames for the completion of inspection reports.