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SSoommee DDaamm –– HHyyddrroo NNeewwss and Other Stuff i 11/03/2006 Quote of the Day: It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This H. L. Mencken makes me forever ineligible for any public office. -- for any public office. H. L. Mencken Dams Army Corps to inspect dams for quake damage The Honolulu Advertiser, October 27, 2006 HILO, Hawai'i — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is deploying a team of eight dam safety specialists to survey dams in the wake of the Oct. 15 earthquakes. The Army Corps will work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and state Department of Land and Natural Resources to inspect 84 high-hazard dams starting Oct. 29, with the inspections conducted over two weeks. "This work will be done under a FEMA Technical Assistance Mission," said Derek Chow, Honolulu District's project manager for the Dam Safety Inspection Mission. "We (the Corps) are coordinating with state officials on the scope, timing and other requirements." Initial inspections on the Big Island and Maui have been completed by non-Corps resources. However, Big Island dams will be re-inspected by the Corps. The federal Bureau of Reclamation will complete Maui dam inspections Oct. 28, and no further inspections of Maui dams will be conducted by the Corps. Five Corps geotechnical engineers will inspect Kauai dams, while three Corps geotechnical engineers will survey the Big Island dams and then the Oahu dams. 1 Copy obtained from the National Performance of Dams Program: http://npdp.stanford.edu The inspections will be conducted in accordance with the "Hawaii Dam Safety Guidelines: Seismic Analysis & Post-Earthquake Inspections," which can viewed on the state DLNR website under Dam Safety Program at: http://www.hawaii.gov/dlnr/ (You have to read the last paragraph to understand what this is really about!) Ceremony celebrates removal of dam $1.7 million project to improve Cuyahoga By Bob Downing, Beacon Journal, Akron, OH, 10/28/06 MUNROE FALLS - Summit County, Munroe Falls and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency on Friday celebrated the completion of a $1.7 million dam removal on the Cuyahoga River. Under rainy skies, 22 members of the Stow-Munroe Falls High School marching band performed in a new riverside amphitheater made of stones from the old dam. A ribbon was cut, speeches were delivered and an oak tree was planted at Brust Park next to the free-flowing river. ``Do you believe how beautiful that is?'' asked Elaine Marsh of the Friends of the Crooked River, an Akron- based group devoted to the Cuyahoga River. The dam -- 144 feet wide and 11 ½ feet high -- was largely gone by late 2005. The stagnant pool behind the dam disappeared. The narrow river now tumbles over a rocky ledge. Trees and grass are growing on the banks. Munroe Falls would like to see a restaurant and a bike rental plus park development next to the Cuyahoga River along North Main Street (state Route 91), said Mayor Frank Larson. The city envisions Brust Park hosting arts and crafts shows, concerts and car shows along with bicycling, canoeing and kayaking, he said. Removing the Munroe Falls dam and modifying the dam in Kent are expected to improve the Cuyahoga's water quality. The EPA wanted the two dams changed to reduce stagnant pools, improve water flow and increase dissolved oxygen and fish and insect populations. The Kent dam was modified in 2004 so the river can flow around it. That change has already had a major impact on fish and insect populations, to the point that the river meets EPA standards, said William Skowronski, Ohio EPA district director. The river at Munroe Falls is expected to attract more fish and aquatic insects very soon, he said. Summit County and Kent are the biggest beneficiaries of the dam projects. That's because their sewage plants discharge into the Cuyahoga River. They would have faced costly bills for sewer plant improvements if the dams had not been removed. 2 Copy obtained from the National Performance of Dams Program: http://npdp.stanford.edu (Sometimes fixing a dam is a perplexing problem. No one wants to take responsibility!) Dams have Middlesex residents upset One failed; another has forced the closing of the road atop it BY LAWRENCE LATANE III, Richmond, VA TIMES-DISPATCH, 10/30/06 SALUDA Fall colors reflecting off the surfaces of Middlesex County millponds hide longstanding predicaments in the rural, Middle Peninsula county. At Hilliard Pond, homeowners have been urging state government since September 2004 to replace the dam they say failed because of lack of state oversight. At Healys Pond, more than a dozen miles away, state Route 629 is closed to through traffic because engineers are afraid the dam the road crosses has been rendered unstable by leaks. The Virginia Department of Transportation closed the road in February and has no plans to fix it because it does not own the dam. Both situations are fraying the patience of local leaders who are anxious to have the problems fixed. A drain on the county State Route 629 was one of the county's busiest secondary roads, channeling 880 vehicles a day through a lush landscape of farm fields and dense forests. Hilliard Millpond has cost the county financially. The Board of Supervisors took $40,000 from its road fund in 2003 to help residents around the pond build a dam to replace one that had broken. Now, with the dam breached once more and Hilliard Millpond reduced to a puddle surrounded by acres of mudflats, county finances are being affected again. Commissioner of the Revenue Mary Lou Stephenson said her office cut the values of the 22 parcels surrounding the pond by a total of $260,000 because they can no longer be considered valuable waterfront property. The reductions cost the county $1,352 in lost tax revenue this year. "We're quite upset," said County Administrator Charlie Culley as he reflected on problems that appear to have no easy solutions. Waters have been impounded at the two millpond sites for hundreds of years in keeping with the Middle Peninsula's role as a grain-growing region. Numerous tributaries of the Rappahannock and Piankatank rivers yielded natural sites for ponds in the 18th and 19th centuries to power stone grist mills for making flour. Problems began in 2002 Hilliard Millpond's problems began in April 2002 when the dam broke days after a VDOT contractor used jackhammers to install stone rip-rap along state Route 602 near the dam. VDOT never accepted blame for the dam breach, but, because it improved the dam in the 1960s and owned a right of way across it, it allowed the county to allocate $40,000 from its road fund toward the dam's repair. The 22 landowners around the pond created the Hilliard Mill Pond Dam Association and raised another $40,000. Association president Joe Longton said the group then met with members of the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation and its Department of Dam Safety to plan rebuilding. 3 Copy obtained from the National Performance of Dams Program: http://npdp.stanford.edu The association hired a contractor recommended by the department to replace a portion of the dam. It paid $80,000 to Watershed Services of Mechanicsville to build a new dam that tied to an existing earthen wall. The company completed the work in July 2003. Then a section of the pre-existing wall ruptured in September 2004 and the association paid Watershed $18,500 to repair the damage. That work kept the pond intact until July 2005 when the wall broke for good, causing the millpond to drain. So far, the dam association has not repaired the damage because it is at loggerheads with the Department of Conservation over who is responsible for new construction. At odds on responsibility Scott Cahill, director of Watershed Services, said Longton forced him to stop work on new repairs that should have prevented the wall from failing again. "We've worked on hundreds of dams all over the eastern U.S. and never had a problem like this," Cahill said of the dam and his company's frosty relationship with Longton. Longton maintains that the state should pay to rebuild the dam because he had been assured by state employees that the dam was being built to state specifications. When it broke, he discovered that the department had little record of the project and was unwilling to finance new repairs. "I was working with the Department of Dam Safety and trusting it for direction," Longton said recently as he stood on his deck overlooking a narrow stream flowing across a mudflat once covered by lake water. To further complicate matters, none of the state employees involved in the original dam construction project still work for the Department of Conservation and Recreation or its Department of Dam Safety, said Del. Harvey B. Morgan, R-Middlesex.. "The department has a new engineer and a new director, neither of whom knows anything about this situation because no one left any records." Morgan has considered filing a bill to make the state pay for the dam replacement, but faces his own obstacle: "The committee wouldn't consider it unless [Longton] has exhausted all other possibilities, including court action." Longton said the $58,500 association members spent to replace the dam in 2003 has exhausted the finances of the group, leaving none for launching a civil suit against the contractor. Association members, he said, "barely scratched together the dollars the first time and the state squandered it by not seeing [the dam] was done right." The county feels the same way.