NICAR To Publish Long-Suppressed National Inventory of Dams

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has for years suppressed full disclosure of the National Inventory of Dams (NID) — once a key tool for journalists reporting on dam safety — or the government's failure to ensure it. Now that tool is back in the toolbox ... mostly.

The NID is a database of some 87,000 dams in the United States, generally the larger and more significant ones. The Corps is authorized by law to compile it, and it was published online for years. After the 9/11 attacks, the Corps restricted public access, claiming security concerns. Its legal justification for withholding the data has never been tested in court.

The National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR) announced today that it will next week publish the full dataset that is publicly available. Currently, the Corps' website only makes it available in smaller amounts. This will allow reporters to investigate the full national situation. NICAR is an arm of Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE).

The Corps is still withholding from the public some of the most important information concerning dam safety. One is the "hazard ranking" for each dam, which tells whether a dam failure would endanger life or property. Another is information about the physical condition of the dam — whether leaky or strong. The database NICAR will publish will not have this information.

Other publicly available databases — including the historic NIDs which will be available from NICAR — can fill in some of these gaps. Some states have online dam databases which can also help.

For a full rundown on some of the major dam databases of relevance to environmental reporters, see SEJ's website.

• "NICAR Will Release Data on U.S. Dams After a Decade-Long Hiatus," NICAR talk blog (National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting), September 23, 2015, by Liz Lucas.