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. States have the legal basis, but need incentives to develop strong state dam safety programs, The federal agencies could encourage such state action by tying significant cost-shares for federal programs like disaster relief to the adequacy of a state's dam safety program. . Dam failure zones should be shown on flood maps, . Zoning below dams should be tied to failure zones to prevent low-hazard dams from become high-hazard ones, Aging Small Watershed Projects Beginning in the late 1940s, the U,S, Department of Agriculture's Soil Conservation Service (now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service) began building small watershed dams for flood control and sediment detention across the United States. Today, some 10,400 dams, located in 46 states and part of 2,000 watershed projects covering 160 million acres, are seriously agillg, and many are beginning to reach the end of their useful engineering lives, usually 50 years, When these projects were built, the federal government relinquished all responsibility to the non-federal sponsors, usually local flood control or soil and water conservation districts. Currently, one-half of these dams are over 30 years old, and the U.S, Department of Agriculture estimates that over the next 10 years more than 1,300 of them will reach the end of their life expectancy, Due to siltation, many have lost much of their original storage capacity already, and many pose significant safety hazards. Proposals have been made to provide new federal authorization and funding to rehabilitate these dams at 65% federal expense, In a nwnber of cases, however, rehabilitation may not be the most cost-effective or beneficial approach and also may not be an appropriate federal responsibility. . Any program for addressing aging small watershed projects should include a watershed-based, multi-objective planning process to assess the full range of structural and nonstructural approaches for water management in the entire affected basin, The process should review the purposes of the project and identify options for rehabilitation, reoperation, replacement, decommissioning, and/or removal of structures to help assure that actions taken will be in the context of contemporary watershed needs, . The Natural Resources Conservation Service and other federal agencies should provide technical assistance, if requested, to analyze options for addressing the aging small watershed dams. . Congress should carefully consider what the appropriate federal role should be with regard to the future of these aging small watershed dams, Association of State Floodplain Managers -12- National Flood Programs in Review 2000