September 28, 2026
Mr. Riley of New York introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Agriculture
To include high hazard potential dams and rural earthen dams as eligible for rehabilitation assistance under the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
Section 1. Short title
This Act may be cited as the Saving Rural Reservoirs Act
.
Sec. 2. Rehabilitation of structural measures near, at, or past their evaluated life expectancy
Section 14(a) of the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act (16 U.S.C. 1012(a)) is amended—
(1)
in paragraph (2), in the matter preceding subparagraph (A), by inserting a covered dam or
before a work of improvement
; and
(2)
by adding at the end the following:
(4) Covered dam
The term
covered dammeans—(A)
an eligible high hazard potential dam (as such term is defined in section 2 of the National Dam Safety Program Act (33 U.S.C. 467)); or
(B)
any dam—
(i)
located in a town with a population of less than 5,000 people; and
(ii)
for which more than 50 percent of the total volume of the embankment of the dam is formed of compacted earth layers.