| Dam safety
included improving communication with the public on their risk exposure. USACE concurred with each of the recommendations and has developed a plan to implement improvements over the next several years. “When it comes to the management of our dams, public safety is our top priority,” USACE Headquarters Dam and Levee Branch Chief, Travis Tutka, added. “USACE conducts self-assessments of our programmes and contracts external reviews periodically. Overall, the review validated our efforts with some room for improvement. By maintaining openness and transparency of our programmes with the public through reviews such as this, we hope to increase trust in our management of USACE dams on behalf of the nation.”
Better communication ICOLD recently issued a statement in response to a
short film it posted on LinkedIn by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), calling for the dismantling of old dams. The commission said that although it was pleased to see UNDRR addressing the critical issue of dam safety, it would have appreciated a slightly less simplistic analysis of the subject. “Deconstruction is far from being the only way to
address the potential safety problems posed by ageing dams,” ICOLD said.” It is even completely unrealistic on the scale of nearly 60,000 large dams according to the World Register of Dams.” ICOLD then went on to give the examples of many dams that have given hundreds of years of “good and loyal service” which is “a little more than the 50 years mentioned by UNDRR”. It noted there are many dams built by the Romans in Spain that are still in operation,
such as the Proserpina Dam which was built in 130 of modern times under the reign of Emperor Hadrian and is still in service. While the Japanese Sayamaïke Dam, dating from the 7th century, continues to provide water storage service for the population for which it was built. In Europe many dams were built between the 17th and 19th centuries, in particular to supply the navigation canals. They are still in service and, undergoing renovation since the 1970s, are now up to the same safety standards as modern dams. Of particular note is France’s 35m high Saint Ferréol Dam in the Montagne Noire, built in 1672 with a capacity of 6.2Mm3
, which
supplies water to the Canal du Midi and is a major tourist attraction. ICOLD also noted that in 2019 it adopted, at the initiative of Michael Rogers, a World Declaration on Dam Safety, addressed to governments, funding institutions and dam operators, which sets out the essential principles of dam monitoring. If these principles are followed, there is no reason to deconstruct structures that are essential to the population. ICOLD stated that it “is in no way opposed to the deconstruction of dams when they have ceased to serve a purpose and when the economic and environmental costs of maintaining them exceed the services they can provide” but does not believe that the message that UNDRR was giving in its film, that an ageing dam is a dangerous dam and that safe dams are those that have been dismantled or deconstructed, is correct. Denouncing the “anxiety-provoking communication” of the UNDRR, ICOLD noted that last year its President Michael Rogers wrote to the President of the United Nations University to express his willingness to work with the institution “to take a more realistic view
Above: A hole in the wall exposes rebar and aggregate on the Lake Oroville flood control spillway wall in California. Failure of Oroville prompted a tri-agency dam safety review in the US Photo taken April 12, 2017 by Florence Low/California Department of Water Resources
Below: Warragamba Dam in New South Wales, Australia is undergoing investigations to address safety concerns
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