California Water News Daily Your Source For Water News in California
The Association of State Dam Safety Officials has honored Irvine Ranch Water District with its 2023 Dam Safety Award for the western region. ASDSO’s Dam Safety Award is given to organizations that make exemplary contributions to the improvement of dam safety in the United States.
For more than 60 years, IRWD has safely owned, operated, and maintained reservoirs and dams that store water for the benefit of the community.
Putting safety at the forefront of its mission, culture and purpose, IRWD is always seeking out new technologies and approaches to measure, monitor and ensure the safety of its dams. That includes these recent improvements:
- A Risk Informed Decision-Making method of evaluation, known as RIDM, that identifies risks, and prioritizes efforts to minimize them.
- Satellite monitoring that provides millimeter-scale precision in examining and tracking thousands of dam points for consistent, frequent and reliable monitoring.
- An Automatic Data Acquisition System to digitally read, store and transmit measurements for monitoring dams in real time.
IRWD owns and operates five reservoirs in and around its service area: San Joaquin, Sand Canyon, Syphon, Rattlesnake and Santiago Creek, as well as a small, non-jurisdictional dam in Harding Canyon.
