The Cost of Rehabilitating Our Nation’s Dams

In 2022, the ASDSO Board of Directors established a task force to review and update the methodology and processes that were developed several years earlier by ASDSO to estimate the costs to rehabilitate non-federal dams in the United States (U.S.). This was a one-year project financed by ASDSO. The updated methodology and processes used readily available data to estimate the number of dams in need of rehabilitation based on dam height, age, and Condition Assessment rating. Data from more than 500 dam rehabilitation projects nationwide, ranging from $10,000 to more than $500 million, was used in determining the total amount of funding needed for dam rehabilitation at a national level.

The purpose of this report is to inform national and state policy decisions and provide the public and the media with a high-level understanding of the national dam rehabilitation need in terms of estimated costs. The findings and methodologies are not meant to be used to estimate a specific dam rehabilitation cost.

In 2024 ASDSO used the 2023 methodology along with updated NID numbers and applied an inflation factor to determine an updated cost of rehabilitation estimate.

Current figures place the total cost estimated for non-federal dams at $165.2 billion. Non-federal, high-hazard potential dams are estimated at $37.4 billion.