Labyrinth Spillway

When the Hydro team finished their study we realized the water gate auxiliary spillway would not be large enough to handle a 100 year flood. Our investigation has shown that the previous failures were due to over-topping so having a adequately sized spillway is certainly a critical aspect of the design. However, when we began looking into typical spillway designs we realized the costs could be much larger than what we have available.

Then Ryan found the Labyrinth Spillway. The idea is that the effective length of the spillway is increased by using a series of trapezoidal or triangular walls instead of a straight wall. This will increase the cost of the water gate but we will save the cost of building an entirely different spillway. There are also potential savings on future maintenance. We are still discussing whether or not this option will be used but it is an interesting idea.