CDA Guidelines: Dam classification based on upstream flooding potential---can you do this?
CDA Guidelines: Dam classification based on upstream flooding potential---can you do this?
(OP)
Consider a dam on a relatively small river that discharges water over cliff and into a much larger river. In the Canadian Dam Association Guidelines 2007, Table 2-1 for dam classification talks only about downstream consequences of failure. Yet for this dam, the downstream consequence of dam failure are insignificant.
I would be loathe to call this a low risk dam because there actually are significant risks of flooding upstream, say if the flow control equipment doesn't work. The area along the riverbanks upstream of the dam contains a large permanent population. There is very little storage capacity in the reach upstream.
So how does one go about classifying such a dam?
I would be loathe to call this a low risk dam because there actually are significant risks of flooding upstream, say if the flow control equipment doesn't work. The area along the riverbanks upstream of the dam contains a large permanent population. There is very little storage capacity in the reach upstream.
So how does one go about classifying such a dam?





RE: CDA Guidelines: Dam classification based on upstream flooding potential---can you do this?
RE: CDA Guidelines: Dam classification based on upstream flooding potential---can you do this?
RE: CDA Guidelines: Dam classification based on upstream flooding potential---can you do this?
RE: CDA Guidelines: Dam classification based on upstream flooding potential---can you do this?
But still, does failure of the flow control system count as a "dam failure"? After all, some damage done by the Saguenay flood was because they couldn't get their gates open on time....
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/ma97/fea...
RE: CDA Guidelines: Dam classification based on upstream flooding potential---can you do this?
one instance of dam failure caused by flow control system malfunction would be Taum Sauk reservoir. but again the failure caused the dam to burst and the flooding was downstream.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taum_Sauk_pumped_stor...
RE: CDA Guidelines: Dam classification based on upstream flooding potential---can you do this?
Interesting link!
RE: CDA Guidelines: Dam classification based on upstream flooding potential---can you do this?
RE: CDA Guidelines: Dam classification based on upstream flooding potential---can you do this?
"From 200 metres above Rivière Chicoutimi, the recipe for turning an act of God into a man-made disaster seems rather easy to follow. Start with an unstable landscape, poised on sensitive clay and riven by streams and rivers. Block the waterways with concrete walls, the largest of which were conceived to contain only unexceptional levels of rainfall, the smallest of which can barely evacuate a fraction of the capacity of the dams upstream. Then alter the courses and flows of the rivers with so many dikes, embankments and bridges that you forget who owns which. Issue permits to homebuilders for hundreds of riverbank properties. Toss in tens of thousands of waterlogged pitounes, some frozen floodgates, and absentee landlords who can barely describe their dikes, let alone get to their dams in an emergency.
Then add water"
RE: CDA Guidelines: Dam classification based on upstream flooding potential---can you do this?
I'm going to ask the Consultant to figure out what response time we need to get the dam open and compare it to the time it takes to actually open it; and if there is a problem, give us some recommendations.
Any other questions anyone can think of that would be useful to find out?