Dam Safety Communication and Training Awareness Request for Information

In accordance with the Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA) of 2014 (Public Law 113-121), FEMA is responsible to support “At the request of any State that has or intends to develop a State dam safety program, the Administrator shall provide training for State dam safety staff and inspectors.” As a result, the FEMA National Dam Safety Program provides continued training and education to dam safety professionals to:

1) promote the training and professional development of the staffs of state regulatory agencies to ensure dam safety requirements are effectively applied and enforced; and 2) to help state, tribal and local governments obtain the knowledge, tools and support that they need to plan and implement effective dam risk management and mitigation strategies.

Objective 1 of the National Dam Safety Program is to ensure that new and existing dams are safe through the development of technologically and economically feasible programs and procedures for national dam safety hazard reduction. The sharing of lessons learned and best practices regarding dam incidents and failures is an effective way toward achieving this objective.

In October 2013, FEMA authorized a project to research past dam failures and incidents and to select the most appropriate information to include in a compendium of lessons learned supported by case histories. This product was scheduled to be hosted on the DHS Lessons Learned Information Sharing (LLIS) website.

In October 2014, all programs with content on LLIS received word from the DHS that the site would no longer be funded and would be decommissioned in March 2015. Under the FY 2016 Cooperating Technical Partners grant (EMW-2016-CA-00052), The Association of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDSO) agreed to host the new website and make the content available for the dam safety professional community.