2,500 high-hazard dams in the US are rated 'poor' or 'unsatisfactory' and a single state inspector oversees 190 dams on average

The United States has over 16,700 dams classified as 'high hazard potential,' meaning their failure would cause loss of life and significant property destruction. Of these, approximately 2,500 — roughly 15% — are assessed as being in poor or unsatisfactory condition, according to ASCE's 2025 Infrastructure Report Card (which gave dams a D+ grade). The nation's dams average 64 years old, and by 2025, seven in ten are over 50 years old — past the design life they were engineered for. Meanwhile, the average state dam safety official is responsible for overseeing 190 dams, making thorough, regular inspections physically impossible. The consequences of this neglect are not hypothetical. In June 2024, Minnesota's 114-year-old Rapidan Dam partially failed after three days of heavy rain, washing away two electrical substations, destroying homes, and requiring emergency evacuations. The dam had been rated 'poor' condition since at least April 2023, and the county faced an impossible financial choice: spend $15 million on repairs with little return, or $82 million to remove it entirely. Vermont's dams average 89 years old, and after July 2023 flooding, inspectors found 57 dams had been overtopped and 50 sustained notable damage. These are not outliers — they are previews of what will happen as aging dams face increasingly extreme weather events. The structural reason this crisis deepens is a catastrophic funding mismatch. ASCE estimates $185 billion is needed between 2024 and 2033 to maintain and upgrade dam infrastructure. But the federal High Hazard Potential Dam Rehabilitation Grant Program, authorized at $60 million per year, received zero federal funding in both fiscal years 2023 and 2024. For FY2025, only $7.48 million was made available for state dam safety programs — a rounding error against the actual need. Most of these dams are privately owned and the owners lack the financial resources for major rehabilitation. States lack the inspectors to even identify which dams are most dangerous, let alone fund repairs. The result is a slow-motion disaster where we know thousands of dangerous dams exist but systematically underfund every mechanism designed to address them.