Improving Scorecard on Dams and Levees

Eric is a registered professional engineer working as a dam and levee consultant specializing in risk and safety programs. He retired from the Corps of Engineers after almost 40 years of service where he led the agency Dam and Levee Safety Programs as well as the National Levee Safety Program. He has engineering degrees from Clemson University (1983) and Oklahoma State University (1989).  Currently, he is the principal of Halpin Consulting LLC where he works internationally with clients in the dam, levee, and mining industry.  

Nate Snorteland has been with the Corps of Engineers as the Director of the Risk Management Center since 2009.  In this role, Mr. Snorteland is responsible for managing risks for the Corps of Engineers portfolio of more than 740 dams and 15,000+ miles of levees.  Mr. Snorteland’s background includes experience designing and constructing a wide variety of dams across the United States.  Following his work as a designer and construction engineer, he worked in the dam safety program for the Bureau of Reclamation in a variety of roles.  He was Reclamation’s project manager and lead engineer for the Joint Federal Project, a $1.6 Billion flood risk management and dam safety project at Folsom Dam in California. 

He specializes in risk assessment and risk management and developed risk management strategies for both Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers.  Since coming to the Corps of Engineers, he has led efforts related to risk, risk analysis, risk management, portfolio management, design standards, and risk-informed design. 

He holds a B.S. in Civil engineering from the University of Colorado, Denver and a M.S. in Geotechnical Engineering from Virginia Tech.  He is a registered professional engineer in the State of Colorado.  He has a love for the outdoors and enjoys exploring the vast open spaces in the Western U.S.

Phoebe Percell-Taureau has over 20 years of experience in dam and levee safety, security, emergency management. She has led the two largest dam safety programs in the world, both for the US Bureau of Reclamation and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Her focus is not only on getting the engineering right to defend decisions, but also in building the case for those decisions in a manner that is relatable and understandable for non-technical audiences to get behind. This has only been possible through developing the technical expertise in dam engineering, structural design and analysis, risk analysis, risk-informed design. She spent approximately 15 years on her career in the Technical Services Center of the US Bureau of Reclamation working on highly technical challenges mostly related to concrete dams, seeking to understand the complex performance of gravity, arch, and buttress dams under normal operating conditions, floods, and earthquakes and then taking that understanding into a risk environment to evaluate whether or not the performance of the structure met an acceptable level for risk to the public. Sometimes it was not acceptable and Phoebe would then incorporate that same understanding of risk to inform the design for a modification or change to operations. In private sector she used those skills to advise dam owners on the best path forward for their challenges.