Kansas agriculture chief engineer outlines dam-safety workload, staffing gaps and inspection priorities

Earl Lewis, chief engineer in the Kansas Department of Agriculture’s Division of Water Resources, told a legislative committee that the state oversees an inventory of thousands of dams and is adopting risk-informed methods to prioritize inspections and repairs.

Lewis, speaking at an informational hearing, said Kansas has “just under 6,500 dams of 50 acre-feet or more,” with roughly 2,500 sites the division classifies as high hazard or larger than 125 acre-feet and about 176 as significant hazard. He described the division’s role as public-health-and-safety work that focuses on permitting, mandatory inspections for higher-hazard dams and technical reviews such as breach or inundation mapping to determine what would flood downstream if a dam failed.

"We want to make sure that what somebody does on their property doesn't negatively impact somebody else's property," Lewis said, summarizing the division’s standard for permitting and stream work. He explained that hazard classification is based on what lies downstream — from pastureland at the low end to houses and highways at the high end — and that high-hazard dams require emergency action plans and periodic professional-engineer inspections.

Lewis described common failure modes tied to aging infrastructure: "A lot of the old dams ... use corrugated metal pipe," he said, adding that those pipes rust after roughly 40 years and then can erode embankments. He cited a 2019 near-failure at a watershed dam near Sabetha that threatened a downstream wastewater treatment plant as an example of the kinds of damages the division wants to prevent.

The division described the permitting and review schedule: jurisdictional determinations are usually made within a week, but applications that require permits typically go through a review (including a 30-day Environmental Coordination Act review) and take about three to six months to process. Lewis reported the division received 12 permit applications and issued 16 permits last year, had about 30 active permit applications underway and processed roughly 30 class-A determinations for lower-hazard projects that do not require a prior written permit.

Lewis acknowledged staffing and funding constraints. He said Kansas funds roughly $1,200–$1,300 per regulated high-hazard dam — well below a cited national average of about $4,500 per dam — and that Kansas has about 700 regulated dams per full-time-equivalent staff member compared with a national average around 200. "We are, from a staffing standpoint, pretty lean compared to a lot of the nation," he said. The committee previously approved three dam-safety positions; Lewis said hires were filled slowly (about one per year) and that recruiting licensed engineers into public service has been difficult.

On statutory thresholds, Lewis explained Kansas law defines a jurisdictional dam as more than 25 feet high or more than 6 feet high that stores more than 50 acre-feet, and he described a 2013 change that created a "class A" process allowing some low-hazard dams between 50 and 125 acre-feet to be built with post-notification rather than prior-permit procedures. He also noted the division conducts mandatory inspections for significant- and high-hazard dams and that owners must submit professional-engineer inspection reports when required.

The committee asked several technical and process questions: Representative White asked whether the division maintains a formal list of approved engineers for owners to hire; Lewis said the division does not maintain a formal approved list but will comment informally if asked about a particular engineer’s work. Representative Roth asked about dams in western Kansas, and Lewis said some are dry but hazard assessments focus on extreme rain events that could rapidly fill reservoirs.

The hearing closed after roughly an hour and a half of presentation and questioning. The chair said the informational series will continue with other agency briefings relevant to the agriculture and natural resources budget.

What's next: the division is using risk-informed decision making to target inspection and regulatory attention to the riskiest, worst-condition dams first; any requests for additional staffing or funding would be considered as part of the committee’s ongoing budget work.