If you’re going to build a new reservoir, you better be dam sure it’s safe.
Engineers at Colorado State University are doing exactly that by running tests on a giant model of a dam that will soon be built near Fort Collins. In an airy warehouse at CSU’s foothills campus, they’re sending water through a 24:1 scale mockup of the dam that will hold back an expanded Halligan Reservoir.
“It just gives us assurances on so many different levels that our design is sound, that it is going to be constructable, and that it is going to perform when it’s built, as expected,” said Darren Parkin, Halligan Water Supply Project Manager with the City of Fort Collins.
The new dam will be built to survive a one-in-ten-million year precipitation event — or 72 inches of rain — which is required to get building permits. For comparison, the devastating Spring Creek flood of 1997 was caused by 14.5 inches of rain…