Legislating for Dam Safety Management

By now the owners of classifiable dams should have submitted a Form 1 (Dam Classification Certificate) with their Potential Impact Classification (PIC) to their regional authority. Owners of dams with Medium or High PICs need to submit their Form 2 (Dam Safety Assurance Programme) and supporting information to their regional authority by the dates specified in the Building Act 2004. The MBIE website has a flowchart explaining the process and timeframes, and other helpful guidance material.

It took almost 20 years after commencement of the Building Act 2004 for dam safety regulations to become operative (the Building (Dam Safety) Regulations 2022), however the development of policy on managing dam safety had started 20 years prior to the commencement of the Act – in the early 1980s. The work of the committee chaired by Mr N Beach in 1984 led to potential policy and legislative frameworks being drafted in the late 1980s. This included a possible Dam Safety Bill 1990 that was eventually set aside in favour of managing dam safety through the Building Act 2004, although a National Environmental Standard under the Resource Management Act 1991 was explored, 2015 to 2017.

I have researched some of this early policy development through documents held by Archives NZ and the National Library, and presented a paper at the combined NZSOLD/ANCOLD 2025 Conference in Christchurch in November 2025 (The Drivers of Dam Safety Legislation in New Zealand - Connecting the Past to the Future). The early history sets precedent and provides lessons on the challenges with developing policy and legislation to assure the safe management of engineered structures.