Classification of the Juturnaíba Dam: Potential Risk and Damage

Abstract

A Dam Safety Program aims to reduce the risks to human life, property, and the environment from dam related hazards. In Brazil, despite of the contemporary law about dam safety, there is still no cadastral information nor the classification of risk and associated potential damage to all dams. Besides that, the recent disaster caused by the failure of the Fundão dam, located in Mariana city, Minas Gerais State, is an issue that aggravates the urgency of preventive measures and plans for disaster action. The present study proposes to classify the Juturnaíba dam, which maintains the largest reservoir for water supply in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Southeast region of Brazil. It was sought to analyze the risks and potential damage associated with the dam, in accordance with two classifications: one from the Brazilian Dams Committee and the other from the National Water Resources Council. It was possible to conclude that the Juturnaíba dam potentially presents high risk and associated high rates of damage, both regarding losses of human lives and regarding environmental and socioeconomic impacts. This is mainly due to the poor state of conservation that it currently presents. It is recommended that future studies should assess the slope stability of the earth dam, and that repair work should be implemented on the degraded concrete structures, with recuperation or installation of instruments that would enable monitoring of possible movement of the earth dam.