# DamWatch USA

> Public, unofficial U.S. dam atlas, learning center, source directory, REST API, RSS/Atom publisher, and read-only MCP server.

Canonical: https://dam.platphormnews.com
Version: 1.0.0

## Use this service for
- Curated educational profiles of landmark U.S. dams, failures, and removals.
- Bounded, paged live queries to the public USACE National Inventory of Dams FeatureServer.
- Finding official, research, and community dam-data sources with cautions.
- Learning hazard potential, condition, ownership, regulation, hydropower, safety, and removal concepts.

## Key routes
- Map: https://dam.platphormnews.com/
- Sources: https://dam.platphormnews.com/resources
- Docs: https://dam.platphormnews.com/docs
- API: https://dam.platphormnews.com/api/dams
- OpenAPI: https://dam.platphormnews.com/openapi.yaml
- MCP: https://dam.platphormnews.com/api/mcp
- RSS: https://dam.platphormnews.com/rss.xml

## Safety
This service is not an official record, regulator, monitoring system, or emergency alert service. Verify safety-critical information with the owner, regulator, and local emergency authorities. Hazard potential is not failure probability or condition.

## Data contract
REST success: { "ok": true, "data": {} }
REST error: { "ok": false, "error": { "code": "", "message": "", "details": {} } }

GET /api/dams defaults to the curated set. For the live inventory, use source=nid with optional state, q, hazard, limit, and offset. The live page limit is 500. The upstream URL is fixed; arbitrary URL proxying is not supported.

## MCP
POST /api/mcp accepts JSON-RPC 2.0 object or batch. Implemented methods: initialize, ping, tools/list, tools/call, resources/list, resources/read, prompts/list, prompts/get. All tools are real and read-only.

## Source catalog
- National Inventory of Dams (Official federal): https://nid.sec.usace.army.mil/
- NID Public Feature Service (Official federal): https://geospatial.sec.usace.army.mil/dls/rest/services/NID/National_Inventory_of_Dams_Public_Service/FeatureServer
- National Dam Safety Program (Official federal): https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/risk-management/dam-safety
- State Dam Safety Program Directory (Official state gateway): https://damsafety.org/states
- Projects & Facilities Database (Official federal): https://www.usbr.gov/projects/
- USACE Dam Safety Program (Official federal): https://www.usace.army.mil/Missions/Civil-Works/Dam-Safety-Program/
- Hydropower Licensing and Dam Safety (Official federal): https://www.ferc.gov/hydropower
- Water Data for the Nation (Official federal): https://waterdata.usgs.gov/
- The National Map — Hydrography (Official federal): https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/national-map
- National Dam Removal Database (Community / unofficial): https://www.americanrivers.org/threats-solutions/restoring-damaged-rivers/dam-removal-map/
- National Performance of Dams Program (Research): https://npdp.stanford.edu/
- Global Reservoir and Dam Database (GRanD) (Research): https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/grand-v1-dams-rev01
- OpenStreetMap (Community / unofficial): https://www.openstreetmap.org/
- Wikidata (Community / unofficial): https://www.wikidata.org/

## Feed and API integrations
- USACE NID FeatureServer (ArcGIS REST API, integrated): https://geospatial.sec.usace.army.mil/dls/rest/services/NID/National_Inventory_of_Dams_Public_Service/FeatureServer
- USACE CWMS Data API (REST API, linked): https://cwms-data.usace.army.mil/cwms-data/
- Reclamation Information Sharing Environment (REST API and downloads, linked): https://data.usbr.gov/
- USGS Water Services (REST API, linked): https://waterservices.usgs.gov/
- USACE Dams RSS directory (RSS directory, linked): https://www.usace.army.mil/Resources/Contact/RSS/
- Bureau of Reclamation RSS newsroom (RSS directory, linked): https://www.usbr.gov/main/multimedia/rss.html
- FERC accepted filings feed (RSS feed, linked): https://ecollection.ferc.gov/api/rssfeed

## Trust and auth
Web dashboard, public-safe discovery, browser-based operations, trusted-domain discovery, standard route compliance, Vercel metadata capture, trace inspection, and agentic workflow discovery are intentionally supported for public read-only debugging and operator workflows. Mutating, administrative, ingestion, replay, fork, remediation, deployment, sync, test-triggering, reporting, and write actions require PLATPHORM_API_KEY.
No mutation is currently exposed. Future protected actions use only PLATPHORM_API_KEY via Bearer authorization or X-PlatPhorm-API-Key. Secrets never belong in URLs, logs, traces, baggage, feeds, discovery documents, screenshots, or public responses.

## Trace status
W3C traceparent and tracestate are accepted and echoed with public-safe PlatPhorm request identifiers. Trace export and cross-site propagation are not implemented and health reports that limitation as degraded.