For the next couple years, officials in Wayne will be monitoring the North Wayne Dam after water was seen leaking through the joints at its base.
The dam, which the town owns, underwent about $130,000 worth of repairs five years ago, in part to address water that was coming through it.
It’s not clear whether the current leakage is related to those repairs or the damage it was trying to address, but an engineer has looked at the dam and determined its structural integrity isn’t compromised, Town Manager Aaron Chrostowsky said. The dam holds back water from Lovejoy Pond.
After the leak was discovered this year, the engineering firm that helped design the repair five years ago, Wright-Pierce, sent one of its representatives to inspect the dam for free, which Chrostowsky said “was really nice of them.”
“The Lovejoy Pond Dam (as it’s also known) is a stone masonry dam with concrete on the upstream faces of the dam,” the firm wrote in a letter to the town. “Water was observed leaking from several joints between the rocks near the base of the left abutment. The water did not appear discolored or to be conveying silts or other material. Some leakage is common with dry laid stone dams especially at the stone to bedrock interface.”
The firm recommended that the town perform annual inspections of the dam, taking photos to determine how the leakage compares with previous years.
“If changes are noted, then further investigation would be required,” the firm wrote.
The firm also recommended lowering the water levels at least a foot below the spillway to see if the leak diminishes, which would indicate whether the source of the leakage is at the top of the dam.
Chrostowsky didn’t work for the town in 2012, and he said he didn’t know whether such leakage was one of the reasons the dam was repaired.
Charles Eichacker — 621-5642
Twitter: @ceichacker
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