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Dam Opened During Sunday's Delgue

Submitted by Chris Casey on Wed, 05/14/2008 - 10:20am.

While I'm sure many of us had a late night on Sunday working to keep water out of our own basements (I was on wet vac duty myself all night long), there is a noteworthy item on the official MPOA site about the Dam. The severity of the storm led MPOA staff to open the Dam to maintain the lake at a safe level. No information is included about how long the Dam remained open.

One document that Montclairions should be familiar with is the 'Emergency Action Plan' which is available for download on Armstrong Connect. It describes the following conditions levels for rising water on Lake Montclair:

Stage I Condition - Heavy rainfall amounting to 3.3 inches within a 6-hour period; or 4 inches of rainfall within a 12-hour period; or a staff gauge reading of 4 feet on the hood of the principal spillway (lake elevation of 192 feet).

Stage II Condition - Heavy rainfall amounting to 14 inches within a 24-hour period; or a staff gauge reading of 7 feet on the hood of the principal spillway (lake elevation of 195 feet) or 2 feet of water over the emergency spillway.

Stage III Condition - Box Culvert on upstream side of Northgate Drive is flowing at capacity.

Stage IV Condition - Box Culvert on upstream side of Waterway Drive is flowing at capacity.

Stage V Condition - Heavy rainfall amounting to 20 inches within a 24-hour period, or a staff gauge reading of 10 feet on the emergency spillway; or imminent dam failure.

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Dam Opening
Submitted by DaveD on Mon, 06/02/2008 - 11:54am.

If you did not read the details of this in the Montclarian - you should. We have some pretty professional managers in MPOA - they lost some sleep that night, but made the right decision. You find out what kind of management you have during times line this and I think it is pretty clear, they know what they are doing. GOOD JOB and Thank You!

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Special Task Force
Submitted by billriski on Sun, 06/08/2008 - 4:28pm.

In case you have not heard, Jim Cech has established a "Storm Water Task Force" (ugh - anyone suggest a better name?) to identify what worked well and what needs improvement. In general, I agree with DaveD - our staff did a good job.

Task Force held their first meeting 27 May, and most of the volunteer meetings since Mother's Day have talked about what part they can play in making suggestions to the task force. For example, the Communications Cmte is looking into installing a remote camera facing the water height gauge near the siphon inlet on the dam. Our poor staff was up a good part of the night just watching the water rise - at the dam in the rain. Not conducive to making good judgment calls - though they appear to have done fine.

I've worked with Jennifer Hughes, the assistant GM and one of two folks - along with Jack the maintenance supervisor - who were up all night and in the middle of this. Jennifer is a fine person. We need to help her and the rest by making sure our Emergency Action Plan is up to date and correct.

I've volunteered/been asked to write the Task Force Report. All of us involved are interested in community comment. Add comments here. More to come as the draft report evolves.

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