Community Update:
Since our last update, SLCA was able to meet with our engineering firm (KPI) on Tuesday, October 11th regarding the current status and next steps of the ongoing dam & spillway rehabilitation efforts.
The Hydrologic & Hydraulic (H&H) study (which analyzes watershed areas upstream of the Silver Lake) was submitted several months ago, and PADEP comments have been minor in nature with their acceptance expected.
While the H&H report has been queued with DEP, our engineers have been working on the next phase, known as an “Incremental Dam Breach Analysis”. Much like how water inflow into the lake was studied in the H&H report, this new activity looks at the water leaving our lake in a storm event, particularly where it can collect and pose a danger to life and property.
From the results of this study, KPI can recommend a reduction in a worst-case rain event that we would have to design for if occupied downstream areas are shown to be outside of significant water accumulation. There is strong precedent for this and is a standard phase in waterway projects such as ours. The initial findings are promising with both our lake characteristics and downstream topography being favorable to overall community safety. This ultimately softens our design requirements making the overall project more reasonable and modest, rather than excessive and expensive.
This activity should be complete and ready for DEP submission in the following weeks, with KPI simply tidying up some final cases & surveying properties downstream. This will mark the completion of another step in the project and we get more information into DEP’s hands. SLCA expects to have a follow up review meeting with both KPI & DEP several weeks after the submission of this next report.