Cofferdam Breach Halted At Folsom Dam As Crews Ready For Next Storm
By Abbott Dutton
FOLSOM LAKE (CBS13) — Engineers have stabilized a temporary dam at the a Folsom Lake spillway construction site where a leak was spotted Wednesday morning.
The temporary cofferdam was built to hold back water while crews constructed the auxiliary spillway.
Officials say they still don't know what caused the breach, and they still need to decide what to do next—pump out the water, or just flood the area like they planned to do in a few weeks anyway.
Crews spent Wednesday hauling in rocks to stabilize and reinforce the temporary dirt cofferdam that sprang a leak before sunrise.
"They had an increased seepage rate down there this morning around 4:30 a.m. and they followed the proper procedures to make sure all the bulkhead gates on the control structure were in the down position because that cuts off all the risks downstream to the public," said Katie Charan with the Army Corps of Engineers.
All construction was immediately stopped and workers were ordered to evacuate. Crews are also rushing to remove the abandoned machinery and equipment to avoid any environmental concerns from fuel in the construction site.
"They'll be driving some trucks down there to get some equipment and trailers and then using forklifts to pull those out. And the crane will be lowering man baskets down into the site so those individuals can pick up equipment, put it in the man basket and pull it out," she said.
Recent El Nino storms are helping to fill Folsom Lake, giving the cofferdam more water to hold back.
"I can't speculate if that's why it's happened or not, but we've had a significant amount of water with the rain storms coming in and we've got another storm coming in here as well, so we'll be monitoring that as well," she said.
The $900 million federal project is designed to better manage water releases from Folsom Lake. It's scheduled to be complete by October 2017.