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Construction crews are building the base of the dam for the Rocky Pen Run Reservoir
Construction continues at the Rocky Pen Run Reservoir in Stafford County. This massive crater will eventually hold back an estimated 5.5 billion gallons of water behind a dam standing 145 feet high.
Members of the Stafford County Board of Supervisors, along with public works and utilities staff, visit the construction progress at the reservoir. |
Stafford supervisors took time before yesterday's board meeting to get a firsthand look at progress on the largest and most expensive public works project in the county's history--Rocky Pen Run Reservoir.
What they saw was a hole of such immense proportions that it required four-wheel-drive vehicles to drive to the bottom. When it is completed, the hole will be a 145-foot-high dam holding back 5.52 billion gallons of water.
"That's more capacity than both of our other reservoirs combined," Utilities Director Harry Critzer said, referring to Abel and Smith lakes. Stafford County currently uses about 3.6 billion gallons of water per year.
Project manager Bryon Counsell hopes to have the dam finished by the middle of next year. The entire facility--including a water treatment plant--should be fully operational by the spring of 2013. Critzer expects the project to cost $125 million.
Workers at the bottom of the massive crater were busy forming a concrete base and pumping grout into the rocks underpinning the dam. This "grout cap" will keep water from seeping through fissures under the dam.
"It's one of, if not the most important parts of the dam," Counsell said.
Counsell plans to have the cap finished in March. After that, they will begin moving dirt to build the massive earthen dam. He noted that construction is on schedule, despite some setbacks.
"There have been a few," he said. The hole is about 30 percent deeper than originally planned. Engineers had to dig deeper than anticipated to reach a rock foundation that was a suitable base for the dam. And the extra digging took extra time.
Aside from the dam and the treatment plant, workers will have to clear trees before they start filling the 570-acre lake.
Although the dam straddles Rocky Pen Run, that creek is not the source of water for the reservoir and will continue to flow to the Rappahannock through a pipe under the dam. A pump station on the Rappahannock River will fill the lake instead. The "off stream" system will be similar to Spotsylvania County's Motts Run Reservoir.
When Rocky Pen Run Reservoir comes on line in 2013, it will be a relief for the utilities department, whose resources have been stretched by drought in the past.
"I'm happy," Critzer said. "I would have been happier with 2010, but I'm happy."
Jonas Beals: 540/368-5036
Email: jbeals@freelancestar.com
