How many challenges can one dam have?? And you want the repairs made in how many days?? Designing and Constructing Risk Reduction Measures at Beaver Park Dam

摘要

The Colorado State Engineer's Office (SEO) restricted the reservoir level at the 100-year old Large, High Hazard Beaver Park Dam in spring 2010 based on a 'sinkhole' found on the left abutment. After the restriction, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) commissioned a quantitative risk analysis to identify the primary dam safety risk-driving potential failure modes (PFMs). This paper addresses the key challenges encountered during design and construction of safety upgrades and how those challenges were successfully overcome to mitigate the key risks and to implement other important dam safety and operational upgrades. Among the many challenges faced were a forest fire, access to and construction on extremely steep and unstable natural terrain, limited documentation on some key project features, prior improvements having obscured some of those key features, weather at 8,800 feet in the San Juan Mountains, and the need to divert flows from the large watershed above the dam.