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Senate committee hears DEC call for preapproved dam drawdown plans in H.397
Summary
Ben Green of the Department of Environmental Conservation told the Senate Committee on Government Operations that H.397’s temporary waivers for pre‑flood drawdowns should require dam owners to file preapproved drawdown plans with communications, modeling and operational limits to reduce risks to people, property and ecosystems.
Ben Green, section chief of the Dam Safety Program at the Department of Environmental Conservation, told the Senate Committee on Government Operations on April 16 that dam owners who want to use temporary waivers to perform pre‑flood drawdowns should be required to prepare preapproved drawdown plans that specify communications, drawdown rates and monitoring.
Green said the Dam Safety Program regulates about 1,000 non‑hydropower, nonfederal dams in Vermont and acts as state owner representative for 13 state‑owned dams, including the Winooski River flood‑control dams at Waterbury, Wrightsville and East Barre. He said his program has seven staff and that the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources is the single largest dam owner in the state when other agency holdings are counted.
"Preplanning is really necessary for this to be a successful initiative," Green said, urging that plans include downstream notifications, modeling of reservoir and channel hydraulics, target drawdown elevations,…
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