Pa.'s DEP faulted on safety of dams

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania's environmental agency has failed to ensure that all of the state's dams undergo required inspections and is lax on penalizing dam owners for violations, a state audit found.

Those findings and other concerns show that the Department of Environmental Protection needs to do a better job of managing its dam safety program, Auditor General Jack Wagner said yesterday.

The DEP's top official responded by saying the agency has already addressed most of the concerns raised in the audit under an effort begun by Gov. Rendell's administration more than four years ago.

Most of the state's roughly 3,200 dams are privately owned.

Wagner initiated the inquiry in 2006 in the months after flooding in the Wilkes-Barre area led officials to order the precautionary evacuation of 150,000 to 200,000 people.

"While there have been no significant dam failures in recent times, the threat is serious and it still exists - maybe more so today with the changing weather conditions that we have and the larger population," Wagner said during a Capitol news conference.

The audit examined records from July 1, 2002, to Sept. 18, 2006. It found that 75 percent of the state's high hazard dams - ones that could cause deaths downstream if they failed - were operating without adequate emergency plans detailing how residents will be informed and evacuated if a dam breaks or overflows.

About 616,000 people live within the flood range of those dams.

It also found that on average, the owners of 127 high-hazard dams failed to submit annual inspection reports to the state each year during a three-year period between 2003 and 2005, and the state failed to perform its own inspections on 109 of those dams during the same period.