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Informational Only

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Preventing Rodent Burrows in Earthen Embankments

Help stop and prevent rodents from endangering earthen dams, canals, and levees

Department of the Interior - Bureau of Reclamation

Total Cash Prizes Offered: $20,000
Type of Challenge: Ideas
Partner Agencies | Federal: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Partner Agencies | Non-federal: State of Colorado Department of Natural Resources - Dam Safety Branch
Submission Start: 2016/08/29 01:01 AM ET
Submission End: 2016/10/11 11:59 PM ET

Description

All official entries must be submitted via the InnoCentive website open on the date of launch: https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9933763

Is there a way to stop and prevent rodents from burrowing into earthen embankments of dams, canals, and levees?

Rodent burrows can fill with water when the water levels change, creating seepage paths, which can lead to internal erosion in embankments resulting in the potential for catastrophic failure.  Embankment failures can cause property damage, loss of life, and interrupt crucial deliveries of water in the West and across the nation.

Trapping or baiting rodents on earthen embankments are short-term remedies, and experience has shown that within a short time, the rodents inevitably return.  Annual programs of rodent removal over thousands of miles of earthen embankment are cost prohibitive and only marginally successful.  Solvers are asked to “dig deeper” than the rodents and offer creative, cost effective, long-term solutions to this real and serious problem.

Download the Rodent Prize Competition Poster.

Prizes

$20,000 in prizes available!

Rules

All official entries must be submitted via the InnoCentive website open on the date of launch: https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9933763