First Week of October: Work in Progress
Published on: Oct. 8, 2010
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It was another beautiful and dry week at Duck Creek as we rolled into October. The gates and air bladders were installed in the Ditch 111/1 structure. Yes, I said air bladders. This is a part of the
Obermeyer gate design. The large bladders will control the height of the bottom hinged spillway. The gates will typically have water running over the structure so you won’t see what is holding it up. This structure has been used throughout the country. Next week the bridge slab will be placed on top of the structure.
The spillways on either side of Pool 3 are also progressing. The walls for both of these structures were poured this week. These walls will support the stop logs that will help manage the water levels within the pool. The multiple sections allow us the capability of moving more or less water depending upon the situation. This will help us manage the daily water levels as well as handle the extreme flooding events. Having a spillway on either side of the pool will allow us to take water on, but also will allow us to get it off the trees in a timely manner in case the flooding happens in the summer, which could be detrimental to the pin oaks.
As we’ve mentioned earlier, this summer has been very dry. The drought conditions have allowed us to get in and do some much-needed disturbance to the vegetation in lower and typically wetter areas where some some perennial plants have gotten a foothold. In other locations despite the drought we still had a good response of moist-soil plants (annual plants that produce seeds and tubers, which have
nutritional value for early migrating waterfowl).
The pumps are running in Unit A to flood habitat in preparation of the upcoming waterfowl season. Mingo is also pumping water into their moist-soil units. October is always one of the driest months for Duck Creek, which makes things a bit tense. However, it seems like once November rolls around a couple good rains start to bail us out of trouble right at the start of the regular waterfowl season.
I'm glad we were able to accomplish a lot with our structures in the past two months, but I’ll be with you and start looking to the skies for some decent rain clouds. We’ll see how October goes. I know I'll have my fingers crossed.
Comments
On November 11th, 2010 at 6:37pm andy west said:
On October 26th, 2010 at 6:38pm Brian Ruther said: