SANDY, Utah — As Utah continues to grow, development is encroaching on dams and increasing their hazard level.
"People build houses and those houses come closer and closer to dams that were at one time out in the middle of nowhere," said Everett Taylor, the assistant state engineer over dam safety for Utah's Division of Water Rights.
The agency ranks dams based on their hazard level. A "high hazard" dam means that if it were to fail, there is a high likelihood of death. A moderate hazard means a strong likelihood of property damage and a low hazard dam has minimal damage. There are thousands of dams across Utah of various sizes, but more of them are being elevated to "high hazard" categories based on their proximity to people. Currently, there are about 200 high hazard dams in Utah.
FOX 13 News found some in public parks and even in the yard of an elementary school. Such dams are inspected annually and any issues that are found are quickly remedied, Taylor said. Presently, none are at risk of failure.
"I don’t want people to get confused or concerned. The hazard rating doesn’t indicate anything about the condition of the dam. It’s a remark on what would happen if the dam failed," he said.
The Utah Division of Water Resources, which helps allocate funding for dam safety measures, said it has estimated it would need about $450 million to address issues statewide. Currently, the Utah State Legislature does allocate millions, but nowhere near that figure in the face of other budget priorities.
"Right now, what we’re seeing with the cost of inflation and everything there’s about, it costs about $4.6 million approximately for each dam," said Candice Hasenyager, the director of the Utah Division of Water Resources. "Some dams are way more than that depending on what they have. So generally, we’re not meeting the needs as far as the finances."
You can see a list of dams in Utah and their safety inspections here.
