MORGANTOWN — With any luck in the weather department, the dam portion of the Morgantown Utility Board’s new Flegal Dam and Reservoir could be completed next month.
MUB General Manager Mike McNulty said the earthen dam is about 16 feet from its final elevation of 1,069 feet above sea level.
While that doesn’t sound like a tremendous task, contractor Kanawha Stone has to build the dam inches at a time to ensure the half-million cubic yards of clay-rich soil is compacted consistently.
Once completed, the dam will be 70 feet tall, 450 feet long and 850 feet wide.
Then the real waiting begins.
“At that point, our engineers will tell us, along with Dam Safety, how long it has to sit,” MUB Assistant GM and Chief Engineer Rich Rogers said, explaining it could take the better part of a year for the structure to settle. “We’ve been working on it for three years, four years, so we hope that amount of time is going to be greatly reduced, but we don’t know that yet.”
Once the dam gets the all-clear, final connections will be made, linking the reservoir’s intake tower to the gravity-fed pipeline that will pull water through White Park to MUB’s water treatment facility.
And just when you think the process is nearly complete, comes the task of filling the 50-acre, 370-million gallon reservoir using the natural flow of Cobun Creek at a maximum fill rate of one foot per day.
“Cross your fingers for 2023,” McNulty said of the project’s completion.
The $50 million project began in March 2018 with tree removal across approximately 110 acres.
MUB’s original projection was to have the dam constructed by September 2020 and the reservoir filled in 2021.
In April 2020, the completion window was pushed to winter 2021. In January, it was adjusted again, to June 2022. At that time MUB put Kanawha Stone on the hook for all engineering costs tied to the delays.
MUB Director of Communications Chris Dale said the delays have not resulted in any increased costs to the utility.
“Delays have not resulted in budgetary overruns, and thus, have not led to costs outside those originally budgeted for the project,” Dale said.
The Flegal Dam and Reservoir project, as well as a $101 million overhaul and expansion of the Morgantown Utility Board’s Star City wastewater treatment plant, was funded through rate increases for MUB customers in 2016.
Outside of some repainting that needs done, McNulty said the treatment plant project is essentially complete and that lead contractor Ultman Schutte will demobilize by the end of the month.
“For all purposes, everything is in operation and it’s working extremely well,” he said.
The plant was originally built in 1965.
MUB leadership previously said the facility began operating at or near capacity in 2016. This project increased that capacity from 12 million gallons per day to 20.8 million.
The project began in Jan. 2017 and initially had a 42-month construction window.
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