Background

Dam Safety Workshops and Meetings
The FERC staff has always worked cooperatively with the licensees and independent consultants to implement a comprehensive and effective dam safety program. As part of this cooperation, we held two workshops, on January 3 and 4, 2001 in Washington, D.C. and on March 6 and 7, 2001 in Portland, OR to discuss the FERC dam safety program. We discussed the importance of performance monitoring and discussed items that could improve the dam safety program.

Working from the concepts raised during these workshops, we invited a group of licensees and consultants to work with FERC staff to prepare a new chapter of our Engineering Guidelines that incorporates advanced performance monitoring concepts.

Complementing the performance monitoring program the new guidelines incorporate a process by which we evaluate a dam to determine potential ways it could fail. The concept is to perform a site specific study in order to better define the important areas of a structure and its foundation that need to be inspected and evaluated.

Meetings were held in Washington on October 10 and 11, 2001 and on March 19 and 20, 2002 to develop the Chapter. Panel discussions to inform licensees and consultants of our work were held at the National Hydropower Association conference in Washington, D.C. on April 24, 2002 and at the HydroVision conference in Portland, OR on August 1, 2002.