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Chapter 2 FEDERAL RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THE SAFETY OF DAMS 1. Extent of Federal Responsibilities The responsibilities of the Federal government for dams and their safety are many and varied. The responsibilities of each of the Federal agencies represented on the Inter- agency Committee on Dam Safety are summarized in Appendices 1 through 10. Federal agencies own about 3,000 dams, the safety of which is essentially the complete responsibility of the Federal government. Under a variety of laws, the Federal agencies license and regulate certain classes of dams to protect various public interests. The Federal responsibility for the safety of these dams generally is met by requiring the dam owners to build, operate and maintain each dam in an acceptably safe manner. In roles such as a lender or a land owner or in furnishing financial and technical assistance, the Federal government has acquired other types of responsi- bilities for dams owned by others. Table 1 shows, by types of responsibility, the number of dams over which each reporting Federal agency has jurisdiction. With two known exceptions, Table 1 summarizes the total Federal responsi- bility for dams. As indicated on the table, the inventory of Federally-owned dams on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management of the U.S. Department of the Interior is not yet complete. An inventory of dams on military reservations also is not yet available. 2. Federal Liabilities for Unsafe Dams The determination of legal liability of the Federal government for damage caused by a dam failure can be very complex. The principles involved are discussed in some detail in the publications Safety of Non-federal Dams -- A Review of the Federal Role (Reference 7) and Safety of Dams -- Flood and Earthquake criteria (Reference 10). Although in a specific case of dam failure the Federal government may have a legal basis for defense against damage claims, the trend has been toward compensating victims of such disasters. In the case of the failure of the Bureau of Reclama- tion's Teton Dam in 1976, the congress, in effect, waived any possible government defense against damage claims and voted special legislation to compensate the victims of that catastrophe. Federal expenditures for damage claims were on the order of $400,000,000. Considering the loss of the investment in the project, the total Federal cost for that failure was close to a half billion dollars. Chapter 2 - page 11