The state has updated its safety requirements that cover more than 4,700 dams in Oklahoma and new rules and regulations went into effect last week.
The Oklahoma Water Resources Board coordinates the Oklahoma Dam Safety Program and recently made changes to some of the safety requirements. The changes came about after the program contracted with Applied Weather Associates, in coordination with the Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi state dam safety programs, to complete a regional Probable Maximum Precipitation study.
Following the completion of the PMP study, the OWRB’s dam safety program proposed amendments to Chapter 25: Dams and Reservoirs. Specifically, Chapter 25 was revised to require the updated PMP data be used for future spillway designs – instead of the precipitation values that were published by the National Weather Service in 1978.
Additionally, the Chapter 25 section on dam inspections was amended to clarify the minimum standards that are required for written dam inspection reports.
The updates to the Chapter 25 rules were approved by the Governor’s Office in June, and the rules took effect Sept. 11, 2020.
The Oklahoma Dam Safety Program will be conducting more free low hazard inspections in the upcoming quarter. Due to the OWRBs policy regarding COVID-19, the process for upcoming inspection will be slightly different than previous years.
The Water board will accept all incoming registrations for low hazard-potential dam inspections, but for the time being the dam safety program will only be performing inspections on dams located in the Oklahoma City Metropolitan area.
Source: OWRB