Infrastructure bill unleashes funding to address risky dams

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — States will soon be flooded with federal money to address a pent-up need to repair, improve or remove thousands of aging dams across the U.S., including some that could inundate towns or neighborhoods if they fail.

The roughly $3 billion for dam-related projects pales in comparison to the tens of billions of dollars going to roads, rails and high-speed internet in the $1 trillion infrastructure plan signed Monday by President Joe Biden. But it's a lot more than dam projects had been getting.

The money could give "a good kick-start to some of these upgrades that need to be done to make the dams as safe as possible,” said David Griffin, manager of Georgia’s Safe Dams Program and president-elect of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

The U.S. has more than 90,000 dams, averaging over a half-century old. An Associated Press analysis in 2019 identified nearly 1,700 dams in 44 states and Puerto Rico that were in poor or unsatisfactory condition and categorized as high-hazard — meaning their failure likely would result in a deadly flood. The actual number almost certainly is higher, because some states declined to provide complete data for their dams.

Though many large dams are maintained by federal or state agencies, most of the nation's dams are privately owned. That makes fixing them more challenging, because regulators have little leverage over dam owners who don't have the money to make repairs or simply neglect the needed fixes.

Over the past decade, the Federal Emergency Management Agency provided more than $400 million for projects involving dams, mostly to repair damage from natural disasters. But until just a few years ago, there was no national program focused solely on improving the thousands of dams overseen by state and local entities.

FEMA's...