A broken pipe in Utah’s Flaming Gorge Dam gave Bureau
of Reclamation officials a scare June 21. Downstream, a blue-ribbon
trout fishery got a shock, too.
The control room
at the dam was empty the evening one of its two bypass tubes burst,
gushing water into the dam’s power plant, generator room and
offices. An electronic alarm alerted officials at a control center
near Glen Canyon Dam.
“All I saw was a door
completely busted out and water pumping out and I didn’t know what
to make of it,” said Bureau of Reclamation staffer Alvin Schmitt,
who thought the Flaming Gorge Dam might collapse when he arrived.
“It was just scary.” Schmitt and others managed to shut the
six-foot-diameter tube manually, averting any serious damage to the
structure, reports the Salt Lake Tribune.
Still,
shutting off the bypass tube, used to drain heavy spring runoff
from Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains, meant little water was flowing
into the Green River downstream. That left fish swimming in
shallow, warm water.
“I’m sure there were some
fish heat-shocked,” said Roger Schneidervin of the Utah Division of
Wildlife Resources. “Some fish are on the edge and stressed. It
just pushed them over the edge.”
According to
Bureau officials, most fish survived the accident, and the dam was
up and running within a week. Safety inspectors haven’t yet figured
out the cause of the burst pipe, but they say the dam’s other jet
bypass tube is safe. The Bureau plans to repair the burst pipe
later this year.
* Greg
Hanscom
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Accident shakes Flaming Gorge Dam.
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