Case Studies

Pioneers began settling in present-day Penrose in the early 1860’s. The Town of Penrose, Colorado is upstream of the confluence of Beaver Creek and the Arkansas River, located 25 miles west of Pueblo. Settlements began along the banks of Beaver Creek.

Sheffield Dam was built in late 1917 in a ravine referred to as Sycamore Canyon, north of the City of Santa Barbara, California. Constructed as a distribution reservoir for the Santa Barbara Municipal Water Department, the dam was named after Eugene Sheffield, one of the City’s first water commissioners...

The emergency fuse plug spillway at Silver Lake Dam in Michigan failed on May 14, 2003, resulting in a nearly complete release of the reservoir. The dam was modified in 2002 to increase spillway capacity with construction of the fuse plug spillway.

South Fork Dam was an earth- and rock-fill dam located about 8 miles east of Johnstown, PA. Originally constructed in 1852, the dam’s primary purpose was to provide a source of water for a division of the Pennsylvania Canal. The dam was approximately 72 feet high...

Spencer Dam was a dam constructed for hydropower in 1927 on the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska. The dam consisted of a 3,200-foot-long embankment section and a 500-foot-long powerhouse/spillway section. The dam’s maximum height was 26 feet.

The St. Francis Dam breached just before midnight on March 12th, 1928, killing roughly 425 victims. It remains the second deadliest dam failure in American history, behind only the South Fork Dam breach that led to the Johnstown Flood of 1889.

Sugar Creek Watershed Dam No. L-44 (Sugar Creek Dam) is located approximately four miles northwest of Anadarko in Caddo County, Oklahoma. It is one of 51 flood control dams in the Sugar Creek watershed.

The second week of June 1964 brought one of the worst natural disasters in Montana’s recorded history. In all, the flooding caused 30 deaths, upwards of $60M in damages...