East Bay Municipal Utility District and Kleinschmidt Associates Earn EBJ Award for Innovative Dam Breach Modeling

The award recognizes the team's work at Dike 2 at Camanche Reservoir, where probabilistic dam breach modeling was used to complement traditional deterministic methods.

Published on Feb. 10, 2026

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East Bay Municipal Utility District, in collaboration with Kleinschmidt Associates, has received a 2025 Business Achievement Award from Environmental Business Journal (EBJ) in the Project Merit category, for advancing dam safety practice through innovative breach modeling. The award recognizes the team's work at Dike 2 at Camanche Reservoir, where probabilistic dam breach modeling was used to complement traditional deterministic methods.

Why it matters

Dam breach modeling plays a critical role in life-safety planning and emergency preparedness, but deterministic approaches alone can overlook real-world uncertainty. The innovative probabilistic analysis used by EBMUD and Kleinschmidt helps owners and regulators better understand risk and make more informed, transparent decisions.

The details

To address the limitations of deterministic approaches, EBMUD and Kleinschmidt conducted thousands of dam breach simulations through a Monte Carlo framework to establish probabilities of flooding and downstream consequences. The analysis showed that earlier assumptions likely understated potential risks. Using these findings, the team recalibrated the deterministic model, establishing a more conservative and technically defensible basis for emergency planning, risk assessment, and regulatory communication.

  • The award recognizes work done in 2025.

The players

East Bay Municipal Utility District

A not-for-profit public agency established in 1923 that provides high-quality drinking water for 1.4 million customers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties in northern California.

Kleinschmidt Associates

An engineering, regulatory and environmental consulting firm that works at the intersection of regulatory requirements, environmental science, and engineering solutions to achieve client objectives.

Priyanka Jain

Senior Civil Engineer at East Bay Municipal Utility District.

Chris Goodell

Principal Consultant at Kleinschmidt Associates.

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What they’re saying

“At EBMUD, we push beyond standard practice by applying science-based, probabilistic tools to better understand dam safety risks and plan more effectively for emergency preparedness as responsible dam owners and community partners.”

— Priyanka Jain, Senior Civil Engineer at East Bay Municipal Utility District

“This recognition highlights how advanced analytical methods can meaningfully improve dam safety decision-making. By explicitly accounting for uncertainty, probabilistic analysis helps owners and regulators better understand risk and make more informed, transparent decisions.”

— Chris Goodell, Principal Consultant at Kleinschmidt

The takeaway

The innovative use of probabilistic dam breach modeling by EBMUD and Kleinschmidt demonstrates how advanced analytical methods can enhance traditional approaches to dam safety, leading to more informed and transparent decision-making that better protects communities and the environment.