Proceedings of the 2019 Mississippi Water Resources Conference

Year: 2019 Authors: Atkins J.

The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) Dam Safety Program is responsible for regulating dams across the State of Mississippi. Excluding NRCS watershed dams, over 90% of the dams regulated by the Dam Safety Program are owned by private entities, such as individual citizens, homeowners association, etc. If a dam is reclassified from low hazard to high or significant hazard, the cost to bring the dam into compliance with the regulations can often exceed the financial ability of the dam owner. In these cases, owners sometimes choose to drain and breach the dam. Information will be presented on the processes and procedures utilized by the Dam Safety Division to have a dam safely breached and removed along with some case studies of dam removals.