• Government Reform

  Six months after the Buffalo Creek disaster, Congress passed the National Dam Inspection Act of 1972. The Act authorized the inventory of all dams in the U.S. (approximately 50,000) and called for an inspection of each to determine how safe each was, to be carried out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

  Until directed to do so by President Carter on December 2, 1977, the Office of Management and Budget had refused to appropriate money for the inspections and the Corps of Engineers had failed to inspect a single dam as required by the Act. Although the Corps had developed a national inventory of dams, the General Accounting Office termed it "incomplete, inaccurate, and misleading."

  In the five years after the Act was passed, there were four dam collapses resulting in major loss of life -- 245 persons killed and $600 million in property damages. A 1978 report from the House Subcommittee on Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources states that "high or significant hazard potential exists at 20,000 dams in the United States."

  Nearly four years after the Buffalo Creek disaster, new regulations governing coal-waste dams and refuse piles went into effect to augment the already existing provisions of the 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. Even officials at the Interior Department, whose Mine Enforcement and Safety Administration was responsible for drawing up and enforcing the new regulations, conceded that the new laws would not prevent repetition of the type of calamity that hit Buffalo Creek.

  The new regulations reflected the position that the Interior Department had taken since the Buffalo Creek disaster-that under the 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act it can only act to assure the safety of miners on the job. Although a number of Congressmen involved in writing the 1969 Act contended that Interior's responsibility went far beyond worker safety, the Department continued to argue that mining conditions that affect nearby communities or might endanger public health and welfare lie outside its jurisdiction.

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