An engineering center that employs some of the most coveted and experienced dam safety experts in the U.S. could close this year, if the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have their way.
The administration is considering terminating the lease on the Army Corps of Engineers’ Risk Management Center, which current and former employees say is integral to oversight of hundreds of dams and thousands of miles of levees nationwide.
Canceling the lease for the center in Lakewood, Colorado, would save the government a total of $972,661, DOGE says on its website. Critics say the costs would far outweigh alleged savings.
“You’ll have a public that’s less safe and at greater social and environmental risk,” said Eric Halpin, a retired dam and levee safety official at the Army Corps who helped set up the center in the 2000s. “[Managing dams] is going to be more expensive, and there will be an increased risk of some catastrophe happening.”
The situation highlights the potential long-term consequences of the Trump administration’s indiscriminate slashing of government. In a twist of irony, the center was created to promote efficiency within the Army Corps.
The uncertain future facing the Risk Management Center comes as the Trump administration has fired employees at other agencies — like the Bureau of Reclamation and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — also integral to dam safety. Now, some dam safety experts worry the public will be at greater risk of flooding and other potentially life-threatening situations given the current trajectory.
The Risk Management Center aims to reduce risks at federal dams and levees “in the most efficient manner possible,” the Army Corps states on its website.
Engineers and scientists who work there conduct assessments on Army Corps dams deemed to be high risk in order to prioritize repairs, said Karl Dise, a former senior analyst at the center who is now retired. The idea is to minimize threats to life and property, account for a range of risks — from earthquakes to precipitation trends — and make the best use of finite federal dollars, Dise said.
Experts at the center have an unparalleled view on the risks facing dams and levees and specific actions that could help protect them, he added.
“This is a national security issue, as opposed to just a plain public safety issue,” Dise said.
The General Services Administration informed staff in late February that the center’s current lease had been terminated, according to a senior Army Corps official with knowledge of the situation.
It’s not clear where the center’s employees would work if they have to move after the lease ends in late September, the senior official said. Many staffers have put down roots in Colorado and do not want to move, said the agency official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
In the past few weeks, two people working at the center have left, and several others are talking to prospective employers, they said. The center normally employs about 130 people, but it had over a dozen vacant positions at the start of the year, they added.
“Loss of manpower is a big concern,” the senior official said. “[We] have staff looking at job opportunities in Australia and Europe. If that happens, they’re gone from the U.S. market.”
Lease terminations — which have hit other agencies as well — are part of GSA’s plan to support in-person work and increase public-private partnerships to manage “the workforce of the future,” GSA spokesperson Will Powell said in a statement. The Trump administration is reviewing all options to make better use of federal real estate and “actively manage” leases, added Jeff White, another GSA spokesperson.
While GSA sent a notice of termination to the owner of the building housing the Risk Management Center, that notice could still be rescinded, White said. The termination notice means that GSA could end the lease so long as it provides 120 days of notice, he added.
“We’re 100 percent open to hearing feedback from our tenant agencies and having agencies demonstrate or tell us the criticality of a specific lease or place where they work,” White said.
‘These impacts are less than ideal’
Housed within the Department of Defense, the Army Corps manages a portfolio of dams, levees, reservoirs and other water projects. The average age of dams is about 60 years old, so maintenance and risk evaluations are critical.
The uncertainty over the Risk Management Center is just one of the new challenges facing the agency right now, according to three agency employees.
At the behest of DOGE, the Defense Department has instituted a $1 credit limit on government travel purchase cards. While there are exemptions for travel to avoid “imminent” threats to life and property, the policy has made it challenging for Army Corps staff to inspect dams and levees, according to two people working on dam oversight at the agency.
Last week, the Risk Management Center postponed two dam assessments because of the restrictions, said the senior Army Corps official familiar with knowledge of the center.
“Most of [the] staff is involved in or leading higher-level studies, which require additional investigations in the field, so you can actually assess the state of the concrete and look at the foundation,” they said. “All of these impacts are less than ideal so far.”
The Trump administration has also fired staff at the Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees dams and water projects in the West. A judge ordered federal agencies last week to rehire previously terminated employees, but agencies are planning an even more extensive round of layoffs in the coming weeks.
Similar firings at NOAA could also compromise dam safety, some experts warned. The agency is responsible for collecting data on precipitation to evaluate the likelihood of a reservoir flooding or a dam overtopping.
NOAA has been leading a sweeping federal effort to update rainfall estimates to better account for climate change in dam management. Climate change is causing more extreme rainfall, and state and federal precipitation data is out of date, said Bill McCormick, a manager at the engineering firm Black & Veatch who is involved in the effort.
While the project to update precipitation data is important for dam safety, its future is in doubt because of the Trump administration’s firings and budget cuts, McCormick said. The project’s funding comes from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which President Donald Trump opposed, and some NOAA staffers who’d been working on it have been fired or left, he said.
“It’s really disappointing, after a decade of working on this,” said McCormick, who previously was the chief of the dam safety program in Colorado. “It’s going to impact the safety of dams if we can’t continue the work.”
NOAA spokesperson Theo Stein would not confirm how many people at the agency were working on the project or whether it had been affected by recent funding and personnel changes. The team is currently determining next steps and evaluating a report issued to kick-start the project, he said.
“Per our long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters, nor do we do speculative interviews,” Stein said in an email.
‘It’s not about efficiency’
The Army Corps has a large number of regional districts, each with its own projects and quirks, according to those familiar with the agency’s workings.
To that end, the Risk Management Center was established in 2009 because dam and levee safety within the agency was not standardized, said Mark Sudol, who held various positions at the Corps for 20 years.
Staff at the center help other Army Corps offices through trainings and inspections of high-risk dams, said Sudol, who is now a senior adviser at Dawson and Associates. Terminating the lease on the office, without giving staff time to prepare or information about where they will work, would inevitably cause “chaos,” Sudol said.
“You lose about two months of productivity at least, not counting the loss of personnel,” he said.
GSA is trying to “match” staff at the Risk Management Center to other office spaces within the federal real estate portfolio, according to an email sent to the senior agency official and viewed by POLITICO’s E&E News. However, the current demand for space “far exceeds the available supply,” the email said.
Ultimately, closing the center will bring the Army Corps back to a time when the agency was less efficient, projects were more susceptible to political interference and regional offices competed for funding, said Dise, the former senior analyst at the center.
Notably, GSA has walked back some lease terminations announced earlier this month — but not for the Risk Management Center. While the agency initially planned to cancel the lease on Army Corps regional offices in Chicago and Jacksonville, Florida, those termination notices have been rescinded, according to the agency.
Halpin, the retired Army Corps official who now works as a dam and levee consultant, worries that DOGE is not just targeting the building where dam safety experts work.
By terminating the lease on the Risk Management Center, employees could be deemed remote workers and become easier targets for firings down the road, he said. The Trump administration has established a policy of taking “all necessary steps to terminate remote work.”
“It’s not about efficiency at all,” Halpin said. “They’re creating room in the federal budget. What are they creating room for? It looks like it’s for tax cuts.”
