As our nation's dams continue to age, the importance of maintaining and preparing them for potential catastrophic failures has never been greater. A sudden failure of a dam can result in very rapid and severe flooding with the potential for damage to homes, businesses, and critical infrastructure, as well as the potential for human loss of life or injury.

With nearly 58,000 of the nation's 84,000+ dams privately owned (National Inventory of Dams, 2010), the reality faced by many local communities is that if a privately owned dam was to fail and impact their community, it would be the community's emergency services that are challenged with evacuating and rescuing the population at risk.

Emergency Action Plan (EAP)

The purpose of an EAP is to reduce the risk of human injury and loss of life, as well as minimize property damage during an unusual or emergency event. Creating an EAP is a multi-step process which often begins with identifying or researching the potential inundation zone downstream of a dam. While the requirements to create EAPs vary dramatically by state, the responsibility to develop inundation maps and an EAP—when required by state law—normally falls on the dam owner rather than the local community.

Without inundation maps and an Emergency Action Plan (EAP), emergency services face a lot of unknown risks—including extent and timing of the inundation—and are less likely to be able to effectively evacuate and respond to a dam failure.

So How do Communities Prepare?

At Dewberry, we help local communities prepare for potential dam failures by providing cost-effective solutions to identify and assess the potential risks, regardless of ownership.

We recently performed a dam break analyses and inundation mapping for more than 50 dams—mostly privately owned, but a few were county owned or recently acquired—in Gwinnett County, Georgia, and provided the county's emergency planners and responders with inundation maps for all high hazard dams. This will provide critical information to support effective evacuations and recoveries in the event of a dam failure by allowing them to instantly see inundated roads, subdivision, and critical facilities in order to effectively plan for road closures and evacuations to high ground, minimizing the risk of injury, life loss, and property damage.

The Tools Needed to Prepare

We also recently played a major role in the development of the Geospatial Dam Break, Rapid Emergency Action Plan, Consequences and Hazards (GeoDam-BREACH) toolset for the Federal Emergency Management Agency—anticipated to be released in early 2013.

GeoDam-BREACH provides communities and dam owners with the tools needed to rapidly and effectively perform dam break studies, as well as develop inundation maps and EAPs. This toolset will reduce the cost incurred to perform these studies and encourages the development of more inundation studies and EAPs.

So if you're a community with dams that pose a potential risk, prepare yourselves now by identifying and understanding the potential hazards. Having this data readily available will enable emergency planners and responders to be more effective at minimizing the risk to human lives, property, and critical infrastructure!