There are multiple dam failures and dam safety incidents every year in the United States. There are currently no standard policy requirements for when or how to conduct failure or incident investigations. This paper first reviews one of the most significant failures in US history, the failure of Buffalo Creek Dam No. 3 in order to explore the impacts of one significant failure on dam safety policy in the US. The paper then explores the currents state of the industry by reviewing 58 different dam failure or incident investigation reports based on incidents that occurred in the United States from 1960 through 2022. The investigations were analyzed and evaluated for characteristics such as the length of time for the investigation team to get on site, the amount of time to complete the full investigation, what organization funded the investigation, independence of the investigation team, scope of the investigation and several other parameters. This paper makes ten recommendations for improving investigations in the future, including recommended definitions for incidents and failures. The overall purpose was to incorporate all this information to propose legislation that describes the process of performing dam safety incident and failure investigations. The legislation draws from analyses already mentioned and a review of five industry-sponsored safety incident investigation guidelines: (1) the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for investigations of airplane, rail, marine and highway incidents/crashes, in addition to pipeline failures and hazardous material incidents, (2) the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for building failures, (3) The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the nuclear industry, (4) The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for work safety incidents, and (5) the currently proposed legislation for the National Disaster Safety Board. The proposed dam safety incident and dam failure legislation defines a dam safety incident as an event where a failure mode initiates and progresses but does not lead to an uncontrolled release from the reservoir. It defines dam failure as an event where a failure mode initiates, progresses and leads to an uncontrolled release water from the reservoir. Failures are of three types: low consequence, significant consequence and high consequence. The legislation proposes that all high consequence failures and all failures and incidents that cause evacuations of 500 or more people get federally conducted and funded investigations.

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