Missouri River flooding

[slosho]

Re: Missouri River flooding

The emergency spillway gates have never been opened. I don't think any of the dams along the river in North Dakota and South Dakota have ever used their spillways until this year. There was some concern (may still be) that if they gates were opened that they couldn't get them back down since they have never been used.

Originally I wanted to make this claim, but I would assume when the water is low (like 2 years ago) they would exercise these as part of an preventive maintenance plan.

If they didn't take that opportunity to do so and they are worried that if used they would not close as designed, they surely are foolish. IMO

[Pierre_Jacks_Fan]

Re: Missouri River flooding

Originally I wanted to make this claim, but I would assume when the water is low (like 2 years ago) they would exercise these as part of an preventive maintenance plan.

If they didn't take that opportunity to do so and they are worried that if used they would not close as designed, they surely are foolish. IMO

We do a thorough inspection of the dam, emergency spillway, it's gates, etc every year. If you had a chance to drive by the spillway during the last drought, you would have noticed that all of the gates were in the fully open position. And yes, we can open and close the gates at any time.

[mango4]

Re: Missouri River flooding

We do a thorough inspection of the dam, emergency spillway, it's gates, etc every year. If you had a chance to drive by the spillway during the last drought, you would have noticed that all of the gates were in the fully open position. And yes, we can open and close the gates at any time.

The spillway gates were open during the drought a few years ago? That doesn't make any sense. Why would they release water from the reservoir through the emergency spillway when the reservoir was already low? And if that was the case, why is the Corps saying the spillway gates have never been used?

On a more positive note, Pierre and Fort Pierre received some good news today. The releases from Oahe will not go back to 160,000 cfs if there isn't a ton of rain. The highest it will go is 155,000 cfs with it starting to decrease on July 12 with it hitting 135,000 cfs on July 22. Again, this is if everything goes according to plan and we don't get a ton of rain.

[slosho]

Re: Missouri River flooding

The spillway gates were open during the drought a few years ago? That doesn't make any sense. Why would they release water from the reservoir when it was already low?

Chris,

When we have a drought the lake level recedes to a point where the water does not even touch the emergency gates. Hence the best time to conduct PM's. (no water would be released)

Pierre_Jacks_Fan illustrated why I hesitated to state "the emergency spillway gates had never been opened" because I figured that to be an inherently false statement. (and thank you for the clarification sir) (can you get me a more in-depth dam tour sometime? being an EE I am fascinated with the powerhouse)

I have a decent amount of faith in the design of the tainter gate system as it holds back water contuinally at the Fort Thompson, Fort Randell, and Gavin's point dams creating the pool at the face of the dam.

Intreasting read for you all would be on the failure at fort peck (the oldest dam) read about it here http://www.fortpeckdam.com/historypages/?p=13.

[mango4]

Re: Missouri River flooding

Chris,

When we have a drought the lake level recedes to a point where the water does not even touch the emergency gates. Hence the best time to conduct PM's. (no water would be released)

Pierre_Jacks_Fan illustrated why I hesitated to state "the emergency spillway gates had never been opened" because I figured that to be an inherently false statement. (and thank you for the clarification sir) (can you get me a more in-depth dam tour sometime? being an EE I am fascinated with the powerhouse)

I have a decent amount of faith in the design of the tainter gate system as it holds back water contuinally at the Fort Thompson, Fort Randell, and Gavin's point dams creating the pool at the face of the dam.

Intreasting read for you all would be on the failure at fort peck (the oldest dam) read about it here http://www.fortpeckdam.com/historypages/?p=13.

Got ya, thanks for the clarification

[Pierre_Jacks_Fan]

Re: Missouri River flooding

SLOSHO - Thanks for clarifying the ES spillway gate question. Up until this year people really didn't care about the fine details of these magnificent Dams in our state. I had a lot of useless knowledge about volumes, capacities and release rates that people are interested in now. My wife would even tune me out when I would explain to her the incredible engineering that went into the construction, operation and maintenance of these facilities.

I would be happy to give you a tour. I must tell you first that my degree is in Civil Engineering and I consider alot of what EE's do is magic. We have two EE's on site and I get the opportunity to support them on a regular basis. Just PM and we can work something out.

[mango4]

Re: Missouri River flooding

Want to help with the flood relief but don't know how? Thanks to SDSU you can now order a shirt with all proceeds going to the flood relief effort. Fantastic idea from SDSU, I will be ordering one as soon as they are available on the 13th.

http://bit.ly/mRPy50

[slosho]

Re: Missouri River flooding

for those who don't get the Argus, here is a very interesting article

http://www.argusleader.com/article/20110724/NEWS/107240316/Corps-alerted-coming-flood?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Home

Seems tome to point out some major missteps... but you can draw your own conclusions.