Canton Dam Gate Replacement

Significantly corroded and at the end of their service life, the original water supply gates at Canton Dam on the North Canadian River in Oklahoma needed replacement. For this facility, owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Schnabel designed new gates that not only met USACE standards, they would operate within the existing gate slots using the same wire rope hoisting equipment as the original gates.

Canton Dam consists of a 15,140-ft long earthen embankment and a 640-ft concrete spillway that houses 16 radial gates for flood releases and two 7-ft wide by 12-ft tall low-level conduits fitted with sluice gates for water supply releases of up to 1,000 cfs. Oklahoma State Highway 58A traverses the dam’s crest and includes a 16-span bridge atop the spillway.

In addition to developing complete plans and specifications for the new gates, we wrote a design documentation report that detailed the analysis and design for the new gates. The original tractor-style gates weighed 24,000 lbs and included both fabricated steel and cast components, while the new gates would be made entirely of fabricated steel and weigh only 17,000 lbs. We included a cathodic protection system in the gate design to promote the longevity of the steel structure. We also designed a crane placement plan for accessing the gate shafts with a mobile crane from the existing spillway bridge deck.