There’s been another dam development, but this time it’s good news – long-lost blueprints were recently discovered for both the water plant and the Lake Gladewater Dam.
Public Works Director Brian Smith gets credit for the discovery while hunting for an entirely different map in the city’s archives.
“I opened the blueprints up on the middle school, hoping some of the side roads would be on there,” he recalled. “When I did, the blueprints on the dam and the water plant came out.”
It’s a welcome development, albeit a crazy surprise.
“That’s what we said,” Smith quipped.
His guess, the plans were likely misplaced when the Public Works building changed five years back – if not earlier – and the blueprint ended up hidden in plain sight within the school’s documents.
“Nobody ever took them out or put them up where they’re supposed to be,” Smith said. “Everybody said we didn’t have any of them, that they were lost. I’m glad we found them.”
The discovery solves several key mysteries in one stroke, simplifying some of the upcoming tasks to revitalize the aging structure that was part of the creation of Lake Gladewater back in the early 1950s.
“It lets us know what’s in the dam, what it was made of, the size of all the pipes, the spillway, elevation and everything,” Smith said, details otherwise lost to time that engineers would have had to piece together. “Now we can go off of them and see what the erosion is, what we need to put back. It shows where the 12-inch raw water line comes through and what it was made of. It helps tremendously.”
Gladewater Fire Chief Mike Simmons is certainly glad for the news. As the city’s emergency coordinator, he’s been spearheading efforts at the dam the past two years, struggling to get it to a point where it can be properly maintained – and, consequently, qualify for federal funding that will help reduce its ‘high hazard’ status.
“It’s a pretty good point of reference to see what it originally look like to what we are now,” he told council members Aug. 20.
For example, the blueprints show the original slope elevation on the south side of the dam. It gives city personnel a better idea of how much has sloughed off and buried important elements.
“Are we done with our dam evaluation?” councilman Kevin Clark asked during the city’s final round of budget talks.
“We’ve made all that progress and the engineer has been working with TCEQ,” Simmons replied. Meanwhile, “We’ve been able to get down there and dig out that bottom valve,” part of the dam’s relief system.
The plans confirm there’s a connected concrete tube. In the near future (sooner, rather than later, with blueprints in-hand) the plan is to open the valve and flush debris.
That’s another major task to be checked off the city’s list before refining plans and making a major play for grant funding.
“Last year we weren’t totally qualified,” Simmons said. Granted, “This is our only water supply – we have no other. That’s going to put us up to the top of the list.”
– By James Draper