CONCORD’S ENVIRONMENTAL GEOSCIENCES PROGRAM TO HOST PUBLIC PRESENTATION ON BLUESTONE DAM RENOVATION
CONTACT: Nicole Smith, Public Relations Manager
Concord University Office of Advancement
PO Box 1000, Athens, WV 24712
(304) 384-6312
nlsmith@concord.edu
www.concord.edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 11, 2024
CONCORD’S ENVIRONMENTAL GEOSCIENCES PROGRAM TO HOST PUBLIC PRESENTATION ON BLUESTONE DAM RENOVATION
ATHENS, WV – Concord University’s Environmental Geosciences program will be hosting a public presentation about the Bluestone Dam at 12:00 noon on Tuesday, April 16th in room 400 of the Science building on Concord’s Athens campus. The public is invited to attend this free lecture, and a virtual participation option via Zoom will also be available. Classroom teachers are especially invited to ask for the Zoom link to bring the presentation into their schools.
Presentation topics will include an introduction to the Bluestone Dam’s history and purpose, ongoing geological engineering work to assess the bedrock foundations of the dam, and what it is like to have a career as a geologist working for the Army Corps of Engineers. The presentation will be given by Army Corps staff Kelli Gagnon, Aidan Hodge, and John Vaught. Hodge and Vaught are both alumni of the Environmental Geosciences program at Concord.
The Bluestone Dam is a major flood-control installation located on the New River just upstream of Hinton, WV in Summers County. The dam also impounds Bluestone Lake, a popular recreation area. The dam is a 165 feet tall and 2048 feet long concrete gravity structure which controls water flow from a drainage area of 4,620 square miles. This gives it the largest flood storage capacity of any dam in West Virginia. It provides flood protection for Hinton and areas downstream through the Kanawha Valley, including the state capitol of Charleston. This region contains the homes of tens of thousands of people, major industries, and numerous businesses.
The Bluestone Dam celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1999 and is now more than 70 years old. At the time of that anniversary, the Army Corps of Engineers estimated that the dam had already prevented more than $1.6 billion in flood damages. That number has only increased with time.
Since 2000, the Bluestone Dam has been undergoing safety improvements to make the foundations of the dam more stable. Among the improvements are better anchoring the dam to bedrock, reinforcing the toe of the dam with concrete, and reducing the erosion of bedrock by overlaying the spillway with concrete. This requires detailed geological work focused on features in the bedrock on which the dam is built. As part of assessing the properties of the bedrock, over the coming year several samples of sandstone will be examined in laboratory facilities at Concord University, including the electron microprobe in Concord’s developing Materials and Rare Earth Element Analysis Center.
For additional information about the presentation, please contact Dr. Stephen Kuehn at sckuehn@concord.edu or 304-384-6322.
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Persons with disabilities should contact Nancy Ellison, 1-304-384-6086 or 1-800-344-6679 extension 6086, if special assistance is required for access to an event scheduled by the University on campus.
Concord University may take pictures at these events for publicity purposes.
