Sediment Management for Dam Removal: An HEC-6 Approach

As many dams in the United States approach or exceed their design lives, dam removal studies have become increasingly important. Particularly, the management of the sediment that has accumulated behind dams is a challenging aspect of dam removal. HEC-6, a one-dimensional sediment transport computer model is shown to be a suitable model for predicting sediment effects due to dam removal, especially when the focus is on quantities of material scoured, downstream zones of aggradation, and temporal changes to sediment concentrations. Although HEC-6 was not originally developed to study dam removals, there are features available within the model that can be adapted to simulate the dam removal process. Methods for approaching sediment transport modeling for dam removal are discussed herein.