• News about the dam.

So what’s going on with the dam?
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded the second contract in the project to rehabilitate the dam in August, 2007. It is primarily a design contract which, hopefully, will lead to getting started on the main project in late 2008.
The main project is to be construction of a concrete wall within the dam to cut off seepage once and for all.
Crossing the dam, you look down and see a construction zone on the face of the dam. It looks like a concrete highway stretching across. This was the platform through which holes were bored to locate and fill cavities in the bedrock beneath the dam.
The borings also provided information on what is down there. In the design phase this year, they’ll be looking at that information and drilling more holes with the goal of determining how deep the concrete cut-off wall needs to go below the dam. The preliminary estimate was about 100 feet.
The total project is now expected to take seven years and cost over $175 million.
In the meantime, Clearwater will be operated according to the original plan. Before a sinkhole was discovered in the dam in 2003, the lake had been operated with considerable deviation from the plan. The main thing was releasing floodwater slower than the original plan, which means Black River did not get as high, but was up much longer. And the summer level of the lake was held two feet higher.
The project is not expected to impact visitors to the lake. But when the project is completed, it is possible the lake level could be raised, making Clearwater Lake substantially bigger - something that has been sought by lake users for many years.