Another Grassing Ceremony

monks from HRND walking across the west embankment

Another grassing ceremony was organized last week, attempting to make the final push to protect the embankment. To date, over 90% of the embankment is covered.

sforbes point of view

steve's photos roughly put together

Race To Finish

before: March 2007, view from breach, looking east into reservoir

after: view from the gate controls, looking east into the reservoir

A first glimpse of impounding water in the resevoir. It's now (has been) a race to pull everything together for completion before the rain really hits. There are still a few outstanding items, such as finalizing on the downstream path, grassing of the remaining embankment, and rip-rap lining critical areas to prevent erosion.

Complete With The Cherry Topping

more photos of the completed dam

The concrete work on the watergate have been completed last week, and now backfilling to both wingwalls are done! Topped off with a little color, the red beam is part of the control assembly to open and close the two gates. Hats off to all the field crew!

Hydro Revisited

l to r: jason chan, brent katlin, monica louie

During the past few meetings, we've been revisting the hydro study done last summer by Brent, Tim, and John. The original study was based on the watergate to provide a spillway capacity large enough to accomodate for a 100yr design storm event. This assumption, however, resulted in a rather costly labyrinth structure. Thus, we decided to modify upon an existing design, and propose to revisit the hydro analysis to consider some spillway capacity that may be provided at other locations, such as the several existing south canals.

Looking back, the hydro assessment have undergone a long journey, starting from getting information about the river intersection, assessing the condition of the south embankment and the entryway of the south canals, and walking down one of the canals, called the Krapeu Canal.

The KAP Doctors

l to r: larry on cadd, comparison of new and old kap jig, dustyn on band saw

Several weeks ago, i was introduced to Larry and Dustyn. They are both mechanical engineers, and generally work on robotic engineering. They heard about the KAP unit we've used on the project, and also heard that it malfunctioned soon after it's initial flight. So they volunteered to fix it! They've proposed to rebuild the jig, and hook up new servos to the unit. From Cadd to fabrication, these guys had all the right tools to do the job. Seeing them work was amazing and fun, these guys are true geekLabers!

The Concrete is Complete!

Here is a shot of Chanda, Mean Someth, and Chai (l to r) standing on the completed watergate structure. The earthwork around the structure is underway now and the embankment grassing is about 50 to 60% complete. But another big milestone has been met and almost two months ahead of schedule!