ASDSO Dam Safety Toolbox

On-Demand Webinar: Lawn Lake Dam: Pre-Failure Comprehensive Dam Safety Evaluation and Post Failure Impacts

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Association of State Dam Safety Officials, 2019



Lawn Lake Dam, located in Rocky Mountain National Park, failed suddenly and catastrophically on a sunny day in July 1982, and resulted in over $30 million dollars in damage and the loss of 3 lives. This webinar will explore the history of the dam, construction features responsible for the failure, the failure event and emergency response, the long legal process to assign liability for the failure, and the overall impacts to the Town of Estes Park and its citizens, the Colorado Dam Safety Branch, and the National Park Service.

Key Take-aways:

  • Internal Erosion Potential Failure Modes (PFM's).
  • Latent Physical Conditions at dams that results in PFM's.
  • Dam Failure Investigations and Forensic Reporting.
  • Preparing State and Federal Dam Safety Programs to pro-actively mitigate PFM's.
  • Learning from the dam failure experiences of the past to be better prepared for the future.


Access Training Here

Speaker(s): Mark E. Baker and Bill McCormick


Revision ID: 2303
Revision Date: 08/19/2022