Case Studies

A sprawling collection of levees of varying size, construction, and ownership were constructed in the Mississippi delta near New Orleans over a period of over 200 years, mostly on low land reclaimed from the salt marshes and bayous, but some like the higher sandbar deposits in the “Crescent” where the downtown area was developed.

With a height of 770 feet, Oroville Dam is the tallest dam in the United States. Completed in 1968 and located north of Sacramento in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, this large earthfill embankment dam is owned by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and is one of the key features…

Palagnedra Dam was constructed between 1950 and 1952 on the Melezza River located in the country of Switzerland. Palagnedra Dam is a 72-meter tall, 120-meter long, concrete gravity arch dam, primarily constructed for hydropower.

Penn Forest Dam was constructed between 1956 and 1958 to be one of the main water supply reservoirs for the city of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The dam was originally an earthfill embankment structure, stood 145 feet high, 1,930 feet long, and stored 6.4 billion gallons of water…

Prospect Reservoir Dam is owned by the Henrylyn Irrigation District (District) and is located in Weld County (County), Colorado approximately 40 miles northeast of Denver.  The District operates and maintains a fifty mile long canal system, 4 reservoirs, and several hundred miles of…

Quail Creek Reservoir, located in Washington County Utah, is an approximately 40,000 acre-feet water storage project for irrigation, municipal, and industrial use. Design of the project was completed in 1983 with construction beginning in November of that year. The project consisted of…

In early September 2012, a series of rainstorms moved across southwestern Utah. In the city of Santa Clara, a debris basin formed by the Santa Clara Dam had filled and drained during these storms without issue. On the morning of September 11, another rainstorm passed through the area.

Pioneers began settling in present-day Penrose in the early 1860’s. The Town of Penrose, Colorado is upstream of the confluence of Beaver Creek and the Arkansas River, located 25 miles west of Pueblo. Settlements began along the banks of Beaver Creek.

Sheffield Dam was built in late 1917 in a ravine referred to as Sycamore Canyon, north of the City of Santa Barbara, California. Constructed as a distribution reservoir for the Santa Barbara Municipal Water Department, the dam was named after Eugene Sheffield, one of the City’s first water commissioners…

The emergency fuse plug spillway at Silver Lake Dam in Michigan failed on May 14, 2003, resulting in a nearly complete release of the reservoir. The dam was modified in 2002 to increase spillway capacity with construction of the fuse plug spillway.