ALBANY - The state Department of Environmental Conservation recently proposed tougher dam safety rules after an audit by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office found serious problems that have existed in some dams in New York State for as long as 36 years and have not been fixed.

DEC has identified 133 high and intermediate hazard dams located in areas where failure would cause serious property damage and in some cases loss of life with high priority deficiencies. Of those, 24 were identified as being deficient for from two to 36 years and out of those, five are in Sullivan County; three are in Westchester; there are two each in Ulster, Orange and Putnam counties; and one in Delaware County.

Senator John Bonacic of Mt. Hope is not pleased with the findings.  “It is really an indictment of the lack of oversight of the DEC over the years in not having proper enforcement on dam safety,” he said. “The DEC cites staff shortages to do this, but in all the years, I don’t remember DEC making dam safety a high priority and identifying the seriousness of the amount of dams that need remedial action.”

Under the current law, DEC can require a dam owner to repair or remove a dam if its condition has been rated as unsafe or unsound and poses an imminent threat of failure.

Given the number of dams identified that were in continuous disrepair, DiNapoli recommended that DEC’s enforcement authority be expanded to allow it to take action against dam owners who fail to fix deficiencies within a reasonable amount of time even if those problems fall short of the current threshold of causing imminent threat of dam failure.

The audit, which examined the period of January 2004 through February 2007, identified several problems with New York’s dam safety program including lax oversight, deficient for long periods of time, engineering reports not done, and not following policies.