74th Annual PSPE Annual Conference
June 5 - 7, 2008
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Pa. Dam Safety Needs Improvement, Says Auditor General Jack Wagner
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection isn’t doing a good enough job of making sure the state’s dams are safe, according to a new audit released yesterday by Auditor General Jack Wagner. Pennsylvania contains approximately 3,200 dams, most of them privately owned. Of those dams, the DEP lists 793 of them as high hazard dams, meaning they could cause deaths downstream if they fail, and nearly 75 percent of those dams either have no DEP-approved emergency plans (406 dams) or outdated plans (189 dams) detailing how residents will be informed and evacuated if a dam breaks or overflows, according to the audit. According to The Associated Press, Wagner said the audit was initiated in 2006 in the months after flooding in the Wilkes-Barre area led officials to order the precautionary evacuation of 150,000 to 200,000 people. About 616,000 people live within the flood range of the high hazard dams that lack adequate emergency plans, reports the AP.
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Practice of Engineering... Without Licensure and Registration Prohibited.
(a) In order to safeguard life, health or property and to promote the general welfare, it is unlawful for any person to practice or to offer to practice engineering in this Commonwealth, [Pennsylvania] unless he is licensed and registered under the laws of this Commonwealth as a professional engineer...

(b) A person shall be construed to practice or offer to practice engineering, ...who practices any branch of the profession of engineering...; or who, by verbal claim, sign, advertisement, letterhead, card, or in any other way represents himself to be an engineer, ...or through the use of some other title implies that he is an engineer, ...or that he is registered under this act; or who holds himself out as able to perform, or who does perform any engineering, ...or work or any other service designated by the practitioner or recognized as engineering...
Engineer, Land Surveyor and Geologist Registration Law. Act 367.