Case Studies

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.

South Fork Dam was an earth- and rock-fill dam located about 8 miles east of Johnstown, PA. Originally constructed in 1852, the dam’s primary purpose was to provide a source of water for a division of the Pennsylvania Canal. The dam was approximately 72 feet high...

Spencer Dam was a dam constructed for hydropower in 1927 on the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska. The dam consisted of a 3,200-foot-long embankment section and a 500-foot-long powerhouse/spillway section. The dam’s maximum height was 26 feet.

Located approximately forty miles northwest of Los Angeles, California, St. Francis Dam was a curved concrete gravity dam constructed between 1924 and 1926 in order to provide a storage reservoir for the Los Angeles Aqueduct system...