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Steinaker Dam Repairs Top $20M Following Landslide
“As the clay is removed and bedrock exposed, we treated the foundation with shotcrete — pneumatically applied concrete,” said Paul Christensen, assistant area manager of the Bureau of Reclamation Provo office.
Lori Tobias CEG CORRESPONDENT
Four years ago, a sharp-eyed fisherman first noticed something was wrong at Utah’s Steinaker Dam and Reservoir in Northeastern Utah. Bureau of Reclamation managers wasted no time in checking it out. “Any time you see anything change on a dam, that is cause for concern,” said Paul Christensen, assistant area manager of the Bureau of Reclamation Provo office. “Something like this is fair-
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ly significant. It always raises flags and we go into enhanced monitoring.” What they found was a landslide approximately 350 ft. wide by 50 ft. long. The slide raised several concerns — that the slide not expose the interior of the dam and leave it vulnerable to failure and that it not block the dam’s outlet making it impossible to drain water from the dam. “When a dam that has been in place for 50 years starts to move, that is something that gets your attention,” said Wayne Pullan,
Water is being pumped out of the dam for a full irrigation season so crews can make repairs.
Provo area manager of the Bureau of Reclamation. Engineers quickly went to work to design a fix for the dam, a project that calls for breaking down the rock faces on the abutments and then rebuilding the dam with a flatter grade. The Weeminuche Construction Authority (WCA), a tribal-owned construction company operating out of Towaoc, Colo., won the bid for the $20 million job. The first step was to pull the rock layer off, and stockpile the large cobbles and boulders for use at the end of the repair. A clay layer
installed in the original construction to prevent water from moving through the abutments also must be removed. “As we remove the clay layer, working from top down, we are exposing the bedrock foundation on the right abutment and as you expose the bedrock, it’s important to protect that bedrock foundation from potential degradation due to water and air,” Christensen said. “As the clay is removed and bedrock exposed, we treated the foundation with shotcrete — pneumatically applied concrete.
“The work to come is to rebuild the embankment over the abutment which will include a flatter slope. We’re replacing the clay layer over the bedrock, but also adding a layer of a coarse soil material that’s compacted and acts as a shell over the clay. That is what is going to allow us to flatten the slope and then we’ll replace the rip rap.” Managers aren’t sure what caused the slide, though they believe several heavy rain storms may have started the slide. see DAM page 4
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