Another Dam Being Improved for the Future

For a while, my series on infrastructure had me dispirited. It was looking like none of our infrastructure was being maintained. And while some of it is being ignored, a fair amount is being upgraded. (Probably not enough.) Asheville finishes $38.5M North Fork improvements

As previously reported by Xpress (see “It’s about dam time,” Sept. 7, 2016), city employees have hitherto managed the water level in the reservoir during big rain events by opening three 18-foot gates in the dam. That practice kept the dam from failing but may have contributed to flooding of the Swannanoa River, which impacts Biltmore Village and other communities.

Instead of manual gates, the dam’s new design uses fixed concrete weirs, over which water flows when the reservoir’s level gets too high. A 4-foot concrete wall around its edge will give the reservoir more capacity to absorb precipitation, while a series of eight fusegates — massive structures built to tip over in flood conditions — will automatically regulate flow into the dam’s spillway under extreme rain.

The construction project should be complete this month. Click thru for some images of the construction.

The image above is an artist's rendering of the new design, showing the position of the new fusegates to the right of the main dam. Click thru for more info on the image.

The design, including the fusegates, is supposed to make the dam handle more extreme rainfall, as much as 28 inches in a day.