Proposed Legislation for the Investigation of Dam Safety Incidents and Failures

The purpose of this article is to propose legislation that lays out the requirements of performing dam safety incident and failure investigations. The legislation draws on a review of five industry-sponsored safety incident investigation guidelines: (1) the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for investigations of airplane, rail, marine and highway incidents/crashes, in addition to pipelines failures and hazardous material incidents; (2) the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for building failures; (3) The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the nuclear industry; (4)The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for work safety incidents; and (5) the proposed legislation for the National Disaster Safety Board. These agency policies and practices were reviewed to determine what triggers an investigation, what is done with lesser investigations, what is the timeline to arrive on site, what is the timeline to publish findings, if the report is publicly available, and how recommendations are handled. The proposed legislation defines a dam safety incident as an event where a failure mode initiates and progresses but does not lead to an uncontrolled release from the reservoir. It defines dam failure as an event where a failure mode initiates, progresses, and leads to an uncontrolled release of water from the reservoir. Failures are of three types: low consequence, significant consequence, and high consequence, which match the current industry practice for defining dam hazard class. For example, high consequence failure (type III) is a failure where there is loss of life. The legislation proposes that all high consequence failures as well as all failures and incidents that cause evacuation of 500 or more people would be required to have federally conducted and funded investigations.