BUCKEYE LAKE – Workers have begun constructing a stability barrier in front of a deteriorating dam at central Ohio’s Buckeye Lake.
The 4.1-mile earthen dam is nearly 180 years old and has been weakened by several hundred homes, docks and other structures built into it. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concluded the dam is at risk of failing, and the state has kept the water level low as a precaution.
It plans to build a stability berm between the existing dam and the water by summer 2016. Officials anticipate gates could then be closed to allow a higher water level as a new dam structure is built.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources says the aggressive construction schedule means that workers will be on the project for 20 hours a day.
Workers are using a method called “soil-mixing,” which allows the berm to be completed as the structure is being designed and built, ODNR Director James Zehringer said.
When the stability berm is completed, construction on the new dam will begin.
Zehringer says the initial plans call for work to begin in multiple areas along the length of the dam incorporating soil mixing and steel pilings on the lakeside of the existing dam.
Zehringer says this method will also allow the dam work to be completed sooner and less expensively.