Dangers Cited 4 Years Ago : Many Private U.S. Dams Still Unsafe, Experts Say

Little has been done to correct the dangers posed by more than 3,000 of America’s private dams in high-hazard locations since they were declared unsafe four years ago, officials and technical experts warned Friday in the wake of the disastrous collapse of a dam in northern Italy.

When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted inspections in 1981--after the cave-in of a private dam near Toccoa, Ga., killed 39 people in 1977--it found serious safety defects in more than one-third of the dams, the collapse of which could endanger lives or property. Of 8,639 such dams, the engineers declared 3,016 unsafe.

But Jack Thompson, the corps’ deputy engineering director, said Friday that he does not know how many of the unsafe dams have actually been repaired because regulation of privately owned reservoirs is considered a responsibility of the states.

Too Expensive

One reason that little has been done may be related to the prohibitive cost of the repairs, one nationally recognized expert suggested.

Bruce Tschantz, a University of Tennessee civil engineering professor, said his surveys have found that more than $5 billion is needed for repairs and that many states have done little to force owners to correct the problems identified in the federal study.

“Dam safety in this country at the state level is about 50% effective,” Tschantz said. “We’ve taken a few steps, but we certainly need to take great leaps.”

However, Tschantz and other authorities rank California’s state dam safety program as the best in the nation.”California clearly does more than any other state,” he said, noting the state’s annual budget of $3.8 million for regulation and inspection, almost a third of the total spent by all 50 states for dam safety.

“California is regarded as the beacon light as far as dam safety is concerned,” remarked Joe Ellam, head of Pennsylvania’s dam safety program.

Review Program

In Sacramento, Vernon H. Persson, chief of the state’s design review branch, said the California program, enacted after the 1928 collapse of St. Francis Dam in Los Angeles County killed 450 people, includes pre-construction reviews and annual inspections of 1,200 private and municipal dams. If defects are found, he said, owners are ordered to make repairs and are taken to court if they refuse.

Asked if there are any critically unsafe dams in California, Persson replied, “No, there are not.”

But that is not the case elsewhere in the United States, according to Tschantz, who helped direct a federal safety review ordered by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

“The biggest problem is the lack of money to correct” safety defects, he said. “We are beginning to reckon with the problem, but only slowly. . . . I’m afraid it is going to take another major disaster to wake up some of the states.”

Referring to Friday’s collapse of an earthen dam in Italy, which killed an estimated 220 people, Pennsylvania’s Ellam also said, “Maybe this disaster will wake some people up.” Pennsylvania enacted a program of low-interest loans for dam owners after the failure of a dam near Johnstown was blamed for flooding that caused more than 50 deaths in 1977.

“We had to do that because the federal government is reluctant to do any of the funding,” Ellam said.

Legislation pending in Congress would make “seed grants” to states and require inspections every five years of private dams in high-hazard locations--nearly 9,000 of the 63,000 dams counted by the Corps of Engineers four years ago. Similar measures have been proposed--but never enacted--in each session of Congress since the 1977 Georgia disaster.

Spur to Reform

The collapse of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Teton Dam in Idaho in 1976 brought wide-scale reform in the way the federal government builds and inspects its 5,000 large dams, but officials acknowledged Friday that some problems still persist.

Jim Graham, the Denver-based chief of dam safety for the bureau, said that most of the water behind Fontanelle Dam in Montana has been drained because of structural problems, and that Navaho Dam in New Mexico is being closely monitored because of seepage. About 50 other bureau dams in Western states have been targeted for repairs under a $650-million program authorized by the last Congress.

“I can say with confidence that we are on top of it as much as is humanly possible,” Graham added.