The Spencer Dam, located on the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska, failed on March 14, 2019. This event is a dramatic illustration of the importance of dam safety. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDSO) has released the Spencer Dam Failure Investigation Report with important lessons learned for those in the dam safety community. WEST’s Martin Teal was one of the investigative panel members. The report is available at: damsafety.org/SpencerDamReport.

WEST provides a full range of capabilities in dam and levee engineering, including safety investigations, breach modeling, feasibility-level planning studies, preliminary and final design, operation studies, reservoir sedimentation studies, and forecasting studies. WEST personnel are nationally recognized for dam and levee breach modeling, and provide instruction on dam breach modeling using HEC-RAS for the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE).