Grant Details

The National Dam Safety Program's mission is to reduce risks to lives, property, and the environment from dam failure by guiding public policy and leveraging industry best practices across the dam safety community. The National Dam Safety Program supports FEMA Strategic Goal 1: Build a Culture of Preparedness and FEMA Strategic Goal 2: Ready the National for Catastrophic Disasters.

The objectives of the Program are 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;
• Encourage acceptable engineering policies and procedures to be used for dam site investigation, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and emergency preparedness;
• Encourage the establishment and implementation of effective dam safety programs in each State based on State standards;
• Develop and implement a comprehensive dam safety hazard education and public awareness initiative to assist in preparing for, mitigating, responding to, and recovering from dam incidents;
• Develop mechanisms with which to provide Federal technical assistance for dam safety to non-Federal dam safety practitioners; and
• Develop technical assistance materials, seminars, and guidelines to improve security for dams in the United States.

The program enables statutory state dam safety programs to take precautions that ensure the safety of the dams, such as the development of regulatory authority for the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of dams, the undertaking of dam inspections, development of Emergency Action Plans for dams, and educating dam owners and the public about the necessity of dam safety