PROJECT DISCUSSION
City Council continues dialogue on Mount Ida Dam
TROY, N.Y. >> The Troy City Council General Services Committee meeting Thursday evening had further discussion of the Mount Ida Dam Project.
Initially, after an emergency engineering inspection on Sept. 28, 2018, the Mount Ida Lake Dam was shown as structurally unsound. To comply with DEC dam safety regulations the City will remove a section of the dam to lessen immediate structural concerns.
Hence, the Poesten Kill creek and Belden Pond/Ida Lake will have a lowering of water levels.
An initial public meeting was held Oct. 30, 2018, to discuss the condition of the damand impact on the aforementioned water level reductions.
According to Superintendent of Public Utilities, Chris Wheland, “The permanent work has yet to be decided, this is to take care of a structural issue that’s on the dam now to protect people downstream on the Ida canal. This is temporary work that will be put into the permit when DEC gives it to us.”
After submitting the paperwork Wheland says he received an email from their engineer stating, “they have no concern with the emergency work and in it states that they suggest a dam or some sort of structure remains on site. There’s clarifications that have to go with that.”
“This is to take care of a structural issue that’s on the damnow to protect people downstream on the Ida canal.” — Superintendent of Public Utilities, Chris Wheland
“We’re having some serious discussions with Ampersand, the hydro plant, they have some serious concerns about the sediment through the emergency process. Either way, if we do this emergency process there’s a sediment issue if don’t do it and it breaches there’s a larger sediment issue, either way, there’s an issue with sediment,” Wheland added.
Wheland also outlined the ramifications of class designations of the dam.
“The inundation map, what Schnabel did as part of their project was actual modeling of the Poestenkill. So this does not have anything to do with the Hudson River, this is just based on the normal flow of the Hudson, this just based on the Poestenkill it- self and the 100-year flood. We do not have a 100-year f lood on record for the Poestenkill. With Irene, the water did overtop the abutments, which is what one of the major concerns was. What FEMA gave money for was redoing the abutments, it was undermining the abutments, therefore weakening the dam itself. So part of it was to look at it through the 100-year flood which is standard that DEC looks at for dams,” Wheland said of the model.
“According to a DEC study, a study was done and actually shows that that dam is a Class B dam not a Class A dam. Schnabel said we’re on the verge of a Class B to a Class C, it’s almost considered a high hazard dam which would be the equivalent to Bradley Lake or the Tomhannock or the other three high hazard dams that the city owns,” Wheland noted of the classification.
“So when you look at the inundation map that shows 150 percent you see the red line of the normal flooding of the Poestenkill during a 100-year storm and then the blue shaded area outside of that red line actually shows the inundation of where the water level would be if the dam were to breach. So based on so many houses, so many dollars in property value outside that normal flood zone is what considers that dam to be a Class B dam,” Wheland added of the map.
A discussion is also slated to transpire between DEC representatives, Troy officials, Schnabel engineering, Ampersand and Kleinschmidt on the issue.
The City Council is expected to address the Mount Ida Dam and the resulting discussions at a public meeting Jan. 24.