DAM AND LEVEE SAFETY LEADERS LIBRARY

Lee Mauney, PE, CFM 1

INTRODUCTION

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do
it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll
absorb it. Then write.” - William Faulkner

“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” - Harry Truman

There is currently no single source that defines the current state of best practices for dam
and levee safety, while practitioners are faced with managing an aging infrastructure,
with increasing populations causing greater risks to downstream communities. To be a
leader in dam and levee safety, professionals are expected to quickly learn from the past,
while applying an ever changing array of new technologies. This survey of dam safety
professionals shows that reading has and continues to have a direct impact on leaders’
careers, especially for the “thought leaders” of our field.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

This presentation will consist of a recommended reading list for dam and levee safety
leaders. It will be compiled through interviews with leaders in our field. I will start with
contacts from the Interagency Committee on Dam Safety (ICODS) and the National Dam
Safety Review Board (NDSRB), and the Dept. of the Interior Working Group on Dam
Safety and Security (DOI WGDSS), as well as a list of recognized experts in private
consulting. I will ask each interviewee to expand the network by suggesting one person
whom I should interview next. Key questions will cover recommended books, how to
make time to read, benefits of having a recommended reading list, how to start a book
club at work, and why reading is important to them.

FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS

The national dam and levee safety community is made up of a large group of
professionals with diverse backgrounds and broad experiences, however there is no a
single document or source that defines the current state of best practices. Further,
documentation of historic dam failures and incidents and how to investigate such events
are only recently becoming common knowledge. By 2020, 70% of the dams in the U.S.
will be more than 50 years old [ASCE]. The dam building heyday in the U.S. has come
and ended and now we are struggling with how to handle an aging infrastructure, while
populations at risk are increasing, causing greater risks to downstream communities. To
be a leader in dam and levee safety, professionals, and especially young professionals are

1
U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, lee.mauney@bia.gov.

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expected to quickly learn from the past, while applying an ever changing array of new
technologies in an exponentially modernizing world.

The most recent dam incident on everyone's mind is the Oroville Dam spillway chute
failure. Following that event, an Independent Forensic Team Report [2018] identified
numerous lessons to be learned from Oroville. The California Department of Water
Resources (DWR) was found to be a somewhat insular organization, with “a large
percentage of its staff having spent most or all of their careers at DWR, and thereby not
gaining much experience beyond the somewhat limited range of DWR’s projects in
recent decades.” In addition, DWR faced “constraints in providing technical continuing
education and training to its staff” and “did not adequately utilize less costly options for
continuing education and training” which resulted in “not effectively drawing on the
technical expertise of organizations with substantial breadth and depth of dam
engineering and safety experience.” Ironically, during conversations I have found that not
everyone knows this report exists. I feel it should be required reading for all dam safety
professionals. I would argue that while not a universal solution for the information gaps
identified by the Oroville Forensics Report, reading is an imperative part of being a well-
balanced, knowledgeable and informed dam safety professional, and especially if one
wants to become a leader in our field.

Each branch of the U.S. military has reading lists for its members, and if you wish to
move up the leadership ladder, you are expected to complete them. Looking through the
lists, one will find some military and war strategy, but also books on history, ethics,
leadership, technology, and even some non-fiction titles. These lists are compiled by
leaders who have been directly impacted by the titles. So, I wonder, what books are dam
and levee safety leaders reading and why should we make time to read when project
deadlines are approaching and the email inbox is filling up? Why should we expand the
scope of our reading beyond reports, studies and textbooks?

The challenges the leaders will face during our generation have not yet been discovered.
When those challenges arise, how can we expect to solve these issues without knowing
history and being able to tell our stories? Future generations’ livelihood will rely on this
knowledge. We must expand our minds beyond college textbooks. Our world is moving
to one interconnected place, where experts can no longer rely on knowledge in one field
to solve complex interdisciplinary problems.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

They author would like to acknowledge all of the experts who took the time to be
interviewed for this project and those who helped review the content of the presentation.

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