Description

New regulations have been made by the Government to improve the safety and resilience of Aotearoa New Zealand’s dams, setting minimum requirements for dam safety and bringing us in line with the rest of the OECD.

The regulations ensure that classifiable dams are well operated, maintained and regularly monitored. They also ensure that potential impacts of dam incidents and failures are reduced, protecting people, property and the environment.

Scope

The regulations are risk based. Dams are only classifiable if they are above a certain size and owners of medium and high potential impact dams have additional responsibilities. Most small dams will not be impacted by the regulations.  To be a classifiable dam, a dam must be:

• four or more metres in height and store 20,000 or more cubic metres of water, or other fluid
• one or more metres in height and store 40,000 or more cubic metres of water, or other fluid.

Owners of classifiable dams will need to assess the potential impact of their dam if it was to fail. They will then need to classify the potential impact of that dam as low, medium or high. Dams classified as low potential impact require no further action under the regulations, other than to review the classification every five years.

For better understanding of the new Dam Safety Regulations, please see Dam Safety Guidance