Lessons Learned

All dams need an operable means of drawing down the reservoir.

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Concrete gravity dams should be evaluated to accommodate full uplift.

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Dam incidents and failures can fundamentally be attributed to human factors.

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Dam owners, engineers and regulators need to address public safety at dams.

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Dams located in seismic areas should be evaluated for liquefaction, cracking, potential fault offsets, deformations, and settlement due to seismic loading.

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Dams should be thoroughly assessed for risk using a periodic risk review process including a site inspection, review of original design/construction/performance, and analysis of potential failure modes and consequences of failure. The completed review supports a case for taking risk-informed actions at individual dams and for prioritizing actions for an inventory of dams.

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Earth and rockfill embankment dams must be stable under the full range of anticipated loading conditions.

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Emergency Action Plans can save lives and must be updated, understood, and practiced regularly to be effective.

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Hazardous hydraulic conditions, such as hydraulic rollers, can occur at dams of all sizes.

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High and significant hazard dams should be designed to pass an appropriate design flood. Dams constructed prior to the availability of extreme rainfall data should be assessed to make sure they have adequate spillway capacity.

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