Dams & reservoirs
The US National Inventory of Dams in Python: 92,626 dams by county, age, purpose and owner, the largest reservoirs, hazard potential and condition, and the text columns, estimated years and repeated storage in the file.
The US Army Corps of Engineers' National Inventory of Dams lists every dam in the country that is large enough, or dangerous enough if it failed, to track: 92,626 structures in October 2026, from farm ponds in Kansas to Hoover Dam, each with its owner, purpose, height, reservoir storage, year completed, hazard potential and, for many, a condition rating and an emergency plan. It is the source behind most reporting on American dams and dam safety.
The guides here read the inventory, explain what hazard potential does and doesn't mean and how to get the data without code, map dams and high-hazard dams by county, date the fleet, rank the reservoirs, count dams by purpose and owner, and find the high-hazard dams in poor condition. Three pages deal with the traps: numbers stored as text, completion years rounded to 0 and 5, and reservoir storage counted many times over.
🧭 Start with the concepts
The ideas the how-to guides below assume you already have.
⚙️ Then do the task
Step-by-step walkthroughs with code you can copy and adapt.
🔧 When it breaks
The errors this topic produces, with the cause explained rather than just the command.
Related topics
Subjects that keep coming up alongside this one, most overlap first.