From: Senator Wallace F. Bennett
2311 New Senate Office Building Washington, D. C.
Phone: 225-5444 March 31, 1965
DaJns
WASHINGTON--Sen. "lallace F. Bennett, R-Utah, said today
that he has been assured that the dams in the Colorado River Project were constructed to withstand earthquakes thanks to built-in safety
factors and extensive studies prior to construction.
"The recent collapse of a dam as a result of an earthquake in. _ _ _ Chile has caused some concern about the many dams in the earthquake-prone \>lest," Sen. Bennett said. "However, officials of the Bureau of Reclamation and water experts have assured me that all dams have been built with an eqrthquake hazard in mind and to the extent that engineers can design for earthquakes, the plans always include earth-quake protection factors."
The earthquake in Chile on Sunday killed some 400 persons when a 280 foot high dam burst, cascading two million tons of water and mud on a copper mining village north of Santiago,
There have been other recent deaths as result of landslides and earthquakes from dams. In Italy a year ago_a huge landslide above
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a dam forced a wall of water over the top killing hundreas. Also a year ago another dam in France collapsed and in a recent flooding in Montana, water once again spilled over the top.
"The Bureau of Reclamation is currently in its second year of an intensive four-year study of all of its dams because of the recent problems confronting the dams and reservoirs in the world," Sen. Bennett said. "So far the dams in the Upper Colorado River Project have
easily passed all of the engineering tests available to the experts." (more)
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~-Sen. Bennett said that there have been some problems with
spillways in some of the older dams which were built 30 and 50 years ago, before the dam-building and engineering accomplishments of the
present.
"The Bureau is reanalyzing some of the construction and
sp111-·::.ys on those older dams," Sen. Bennett said, "Although none of the large dams are involved at this time."
Sen. Bennett said that "it is not likely that the large dams
will become involved in failures. Usually the smaller dams are the ones which cause the problems.
"The Glen canyon and Flaming Gorge Dams were built under a
•super-cautious• label," Sen. Bennett said. "I am confident that all
of the engineering know-how available and possible to put into a
