City of Asheville Celebrates North Fork Dam Completion

On October 20, City officials, project managers, and others involved in the North Fork Dam Improvement project gathered to celebrate its completion.

Schnabel Engineering started working on the North Fork Dam project in 2011. In collaboration with the City of Asheville, the design team designed spillway and embankment improvements to bring the dam to current industry and regulatory standards.

Mark Landis was the Project Manager on the North Fork Dam project, and he took a moment to speak at the ribbon cutting ceremony. With a picturesque mountain view, Mark explained the issues that were identified and how Schnabel Engineering was brought on the project team to provide a course of action relative to risk for each deficiency and a sequential engineering resolution for each deficiency.

“We considered about 12 options. One [option] would have been [RCC overtopping of this proposed auxiliary spillway designated area] and passing the [PMP] flows over this section, but we wanted to protect the houses [downstream off to the left] and the [required] capacity would still not have been achieved; so we came up with this spillway design working with Hydroplus where these individual Fusegates can release [the additional required flows for the PMP].”

The modifications also included seismic buttressing of the 140-ft-high Main Dam and 60-ft-high Saddle Dam, a new drainage system for controlling seepage, a cloud-based instrumentation system, a new gravity weir at the Principal Spillway, and other ancillary improvements.

Now that the dam is completed, the citizens of Ashville will be protected from any storm related flooding and will have a significant water supply for decades to come.