The Numbers Behind the Grade

In its 2025 Report Card for America's Infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave U.S. dams a grade of D+. The same report card gave levees an identical D+. Those grades reflect a measurable and worsening condition across structures that protect hundreds of communities from catastrophic flooding.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' National Inventory of Dams lists more than 92,000 dams nationwide. Their average age is 65 years. Nearly 17,000 of those dams are classified as high-hazard potential—meaning their failure could result in loss of life. As of 2025, 2,522 of those high-hazard dams—approximately 15%—were considered to be in poor or unsatisfactory condition.

The Association of State Dam Safety Officials has tracked a dramatic increase in dam failures and emergency interventions over the past three decades. During the period from 1994 to 2003, such incidents averaged three per year. During 2014 to 2023, they averaged 76 per year—a more than twentyfold increase.

A $165 Billion Rehabilitation Backlog

In March 2025, ASDSO released a study estimating the total cost to rehabilitate the nation's non-federal dams at $165.2 billion. Rehabilitating just the most critical structures—the high-hazard dams—was estimated at $37.4 billion. ASCE reported that although the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocated roughly $3 billion for dam safety, much of that funding has since been redirected.

The gap between need and available resources is stark. John Moyle, P.E., a senior project engineer with GEI Consultants and former director of dam safety for New Jersey, put it directly: "The cost is quite prohibitive, and between the states and federal government, no one is investing that type of money."

Federal programs remain chronically underfunded. On average, a single state dam safety official oversees 190 existing dams—a ratio that makes regular inspection, let alone enforcement, extremely difficult in most states.

Why the Problem Is Getting Worse, Not Better

Three forces are compounding an already serious problem.

Outdated engineering standards. Many dams older than 50 years were designed using hydrologic calculations that no longer reflect current conditions. Moyle noted that these structures were typically designed to handle a 100-year storm—but those events are now occurring with far greater frequency.

Hazard creep. Communities have grown downstream of dams that were built in rural or undeveloped areas. A dam that was originally classified as low or significant hazard may now be a high-hazard structure because of residential and commercial development in the inundation zone beneath it. The dam's design hasn't changed, but the consequences of failure have grown dramatically.

Climate volatility. John Roche, P.E., ASDSO president and chief of Maryland's Dam Safety Permits Division, pointed to the town of Ellicott City, Maryland, as an example: it experienced so-called 1,000-year rainfall events twice within three years, in 2016 and 2018. "A storm that has a 1-in-1,000 chance of happening each year occurred twice in the span of three years," Roche said. Older spillway designs weren't built for that world.

A Critical Federal Program Is Set to Expire

The High Hazard Potential Dam Rehabilitation Grant Program (HHPD) is the primary federal tool for directing rehabilitation funds to the most dangerous structures. First authorized in 2016, the program has provided $71.1 million in grant funding across 40 states and Puerto Rico since 2019. ASCE's December 2025 statement to Congress warned that "the HHPD program's legislative authority is set to lapse in September of 2026. Reauthorization of this critical program will be necessary to ensure that it is available to address the growing challenges to high-hazard dams nationwide."

ASCE is advocating for inclusion of the Dam Assessment and Mitigation Support (DAMS) Act in any WRDA legislation considered in 2026. The DAMS Act would reauthorize the HHPD program for five years.

Beyond the HHPD program, ASCE's 2026 WRDA priorities include reauthorizing the National Dam Safety Program, revising state assistance grant formulas, extending the National Levee Safety Program through 2033, and addressing the Army Corps of Engineers' water resources project backlog—which ASCE estimates at more than $100 billion.

WRDA 2026: The Legislative Window

Congress has passed a Water Resources Development Act on a bipartisan basis every two years since 2014. The most recent WRDA was signed into law in January 2025. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a WRDA 2026 oversight hearing on February 25, 2026, and both the House and Senate committees have been in the review-and-draft stages since early 2026.

ASCE has made clear what it considers essential inclusions for the bill. Roche summarized the case for reauthorizing the HHPD program with unusual directness: "Let's reauthorize it. Let's get the train moving out from the station. Let's get the money to the dam owners who need it. And when we show success, we can ask for the appropriations increase."

He also explained what inaction would mean: "Death, destruction, devastation. A high-hazard dam is—simply put—a dam that, if it were to fail, people die."

What This Means for the Construction Industry

Dam rehabilitation is a specialized and capital-intensive form of civil construction. Projects typically require geotechnical assessment, structural analysis, spillway upgrades, embankment work, and sometimes complete replacement of aging structures. The skills that go into dam rehabilitation—earthwork, concrete, hydraulic structures, heavy civil—are the same skills that underpin much of the public infrastructure construction market.

The ASDSO's $165 billion estimate represents a significant and durable pipeline of work for civil contractors and engineers, if funding can be unlocked at scale. The challenge is political: the program has been historically underfunded, with appropriations falling well short of what the HHPD authorization would allow. Reauthorization in WRDA 2026 would reset the legal clock but would not by itself appropriate the money needed to close the gap.

For contractors tracking public construction pipelines, dam safety deserves a place on the radar. Even if progress is gradual, the volume of work needed and the consequences of continued inaction make it one of the most significant deferred maintenance challenges in U.S. infrastructure.

Sources

• ASCE Civil Engineering Source – Aging U.S. Dams Pose Rising Safety Risks (March 12, 2026)
• ASCE Civil Engineering Source – ASCE Outlines WRDA 2026 Water Infrastructure Needs (April 7, 2026)
• Senate Environment and Public Works Committee – WRDA 2026 Hearing (February 25, 2026)
• ASCE – Statement on WRDA 2026 to House T&I Committee (December 17, 2025)
• ASCE – House Appropriations Request, Energy and Water Subcommittee FY27 (February 10, 2026)
• National Waterways Conference – NWC Federal Spotlight: WRDA 2026 Status (March 16, 2026)