Risk-Based Dam Inspection Guidelines – Montana Learns from the Oroville Dam Incident

Montana Dam Safety recently undertook a project to update their dam inspection guidelines with a goal of improving the quality of dam inspection reports submitted by dam owners and their engineers. As part of this effort, a new risk-based approach for dam inspection requirements was also implemented to address a recommendation from a 2019 external peer review of the Montana Dam Safety Program. The external peer review was focused on lessons learned from the Oroville Dam incident and highlighted the need for appropriate consideration of a “credible” dam failure event. As part of the inspection guideline improvement project, consequences of a credible dam failure were evaluated for approximately 100 high hazard dams and each dam was assigned a risk category. Specific inspection guidelines were developed for each category.