I smiled when you said rebarb and then corrected yourself. I enjoy watching your vids. The kid in me wanted to see you fly through the arch of the Komatsu closest to the notch.
Put some c4 on that thing and weaken it, that's some hard concrete. We did concrete charges for breaching in the Marines with c4 and it put holes in those thick walls in Afghanistan.
You remind me of that guy who did the videos for Oroville dam in Cali. blancolirio channel check him out. Too bad it's not a long term project. Love hows its presented like current news channel based in important things... nature, science, engineering etc
Bruce do you know if they are going to remove the flood walls near the dam after they finish the stream restoration? I would assume removing the sediment build up will lower the flood plain in that area, but they might keep them just in case anyway?
On the Day-1 video Ron Butler commented... For those wondering why. Over the years, fluctuations of nitrates and other pollutants along the Sandusky River, as well as structural deficiencies of the Ballville Dam, led the City of Fremont to build an off-line up ground drinking water reservoir. No longer needed, the dam is blocking 22 miles of critical walleye and white bass spawning habitat.
the digger's don't appear to be set up as demolition specific machines, maybe a local contractor just got lucky with the tender and it seems (to me) to be a mis mash approach...
That's pretty demolition-specific. My father ran a demolition company for years and I worked for him in college, even got to play with the excavators on slow days when I had to help the mechanic at the shop. Exact same approach, only with buildings and concrete interstate bridges instead of dams. Even used Komatsu excavators with the hoe ram and grapple like we see in these videos.
I'm curious as to how this will affect the river. As an outsider, it seems like it's a contentious issue with the locals. Is there more environmental work to be done once the demolition is finished? Thanks for the interesting videos!
Generally after dams are removed they bulldoze the sediment that built up right behind the dam into a more natural looking bank and plant native Riparian plants/trees to help keep floods from washing too much sediment down the river at once. Bruce said they were going to seed the mud banks up river.
konsul2006 Dynamite would probably harm the dam's structural integrity. This would make it dangerous for workers to remove debris, it would be pretty cool though :)
I wonder why the corps of engineers didn't decide to use explosives to open up the one side and then after the reservoir was drained use explosives to level the remainder.
I'm guessing that Hydroelectricity isn't a big interest in the US with this removal? Seems such a shame that it can't be made to work still. Anyone know reasons for this demolition other than fish stocks etc? Regards & thanks from the UK.
not much hydro from a 6ft drop ... it just that there are too many dams. back in the day towns would install a dam or two and not think what a hundred dams on one river would do! and it turns out too many dams are not a good thing
the hydro electric plant hasn't been operational for years, they run a haunted house out of it now. it's a pretty popular attraction, alice cooper even visited there once.
Dams in the US can't just be abandoned if they hold back water, they have to be maintained up to federal standards or the dam owner can be fined. It's cheaper for the owner to just remove it rather than maintain it for no reason.
A hundred years ago it was built to furnish electricity and water storage for a much smaller town. But they were only able to generate electricity for a few hours at a time and then had to close the gate. Not economically viable for such a short generation cycle and kinda useless during summer low or no rainfall. As for water storage it's obvious from the videos that the silt build up had rendered it mostly useless for that purpose. The dam serves no practical purpose anymore and taking it out will help revive the fisheries but that depends on whether more pollutants are allowed to be dumped in the river.
My way of looking at things, use those few hours of electricity production to store it in new fangled batteries to be use during peak periods. Sediment? Simple dredging would fix that. A couple conveyors, place the sediment on the other side of the dam. The next heavy rain fall will wash it all down stream. Rinse and repeat until its gone. After that, better manage the dam so sediment doesn't fill the reservoir. Seems to me who ever was suppose to manage the dam did a piss poor job of it over many many yrs. Fire the SOB's!!!
