It's happened many times before, in many communities. A large storm causes a dam to break or to "overtop," causing massive destructive flooding. Local responders must act quickly to preserve lives and property. To do that, there must be an emergency action plan.

The Coal Ash Management Act of 2014 introduced new requirements to ensure the safety of communities surrounding intermediate and high-hazard dams in the case of a breach. Dam owners must update their emergency action plans for what to do in the case of a dam failure. A breach of a dam classified as "high-hazard" will possibly cause loss of human life, serious damage to homes, industrial or commercial buildings, public utilities, primary highways or major railroads. Emergency action plans (EAPs) provide knowledge of what could happen from a high-hazard dam failure.

Water resources engineers at Alpha & Omega Group are well-acquainted with the technical, regulatory, and coordination requirements associated with dam EAP preparation. We provide dam inspection, hydrologic and hydraulic analysis, dam break analysis, and inundation mapping as part of the process of developing an EAP. The EAP will describe potential emergency conditions including security risks that could occur at respective reservoirs. It will explain how an emergency at the project would be detected and evaluated. It is expected that an emergency would be detected by first hand observation,  monitoring of the local and remote instrumentation, and current weather and new forecasts obtained from several media sources. The EAP will provide a clear description of actions to be taken in response to the emergency conditions at the dam. It will contain notification flow charts which identify emergency notification procedures to aid in warning and evacuations during an emergency condition. We will ensure that the EAP meets local and federal regulatory compliance.