Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD) has been awarded the 2014 Association of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDS0) National Rehabilitation Project of the Year Award. Hayward Baker served as general contractor for the 2013 rehab project on the Eagle Mountain Spillway Dam in Fort Worth, Texas.

“This was a proactive effort to bring an aging dam up to current design standards,” says Louie Verreault, TRWD dam and levee safety engineer. “What we found was that the 80-year-old dam is in excellent condition. The measures we implemented during this project provide reassurance the dam will perform as expected for another 50 to 80 years.”

The award recognizes unique remedial designs that improve dam safety and reflect the technical standards that dam safety requires. It is presented to the individual, company, agency or organization whose project best represents those qualities. Verreault received the award during the ASDSO’s conference award banquet in San Diego.

The dam is situated on Eagle Mountain Lake, which is owned and operated by TRWD. It supplies water to Fort Worth for municipal, industrial and irrigation uses. TRWD and Parsons Brinckerhoff engineers performed a complete checkup and added new instrumentation to help monitor conditions within the dam.

Hayward Baker completed a grouting program to reduce seepage. The company constructed a cutoff wall and completed a series of onsite tests to verify that the program would achieve a maximum permeability of 10-6 cm/sec.

“We faced several challenges during the project, which included the narrow work space on the crown of the dam and the need to accommodate vehicular traffic,” says Art Pengelly, senior vice president at Hayward Baker. “Thanks to the effort of the project team, which was led by Dan Bole and Billy Fisher of HBI, we successfully completed the project on schedule while achieving the required permeability reduction.”

Hayward Baker has worked in ground modification and site improvement for 60 years, and offers a range of foundation support and rehabilitation services. For more information, visit www.haywardbaker.com.