Nearly $10 million allocated to the Army Corps of Engineers will pay for work to insure the integrity of the Chena Flood Control Project in North Pole.
Project Manager Tim Feavel said additional relief wells will be installed along the seven-mile long earthen dam to protect it from ground water seepage during high water events.
”Those are the black pipes that you see on the downstream side of the dam,” Feavel said. “There’s about 160 of them in place right now, and what those do is they relieve that uplift pressure from the ground water associated with a a high pool level.”
Feavel said water that comes out of the relief wells is channeled back to the Chena River. He said drilling of the new wells along will get underway this summer in areas showing signs of seepage under the dam.
”You might see some small sand boils or something like that where it might be percolating underneath,” Feavel said. “That’s the place to install relief wells. And so far it’s been minor and we wanna keep ahead of it.”
The Chena Flood Control Project, completed in 1980, is designed to protect Fairbanks from high water events like the 1967 flood that inundated the community 50 years ago this August. $9.7 million for Chena Flood Control project maintenance and operations is included in an omnibus appropriations bill that passed the US Senate last week.
Dan Bross is a reporter at KUAC in Fairbanks.
