LEWISVILLE, Texas - U.S. Congressman Michael C. Burgess, M.D., Representative serving Texas' 26th Congressional District, and staff, met with Col. Jon Stover, commander, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District, and staff, at Lewisville Lake Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022.
During the visit, Fort Worth District Dam Safety Program Manager Stacy Gray led a tour of the Lewisville Dam and provided an update on the Lewisville Dam Safety Modification.
“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers strives to be completely transparent when it comes to the risks associated with our dams and flooding,” Gray said. “Although the Lewisville Dam is classified as high-urgency due to the potential loss of life and property downstream, the dam is operating as intended and will continue to successfully perform all the functions it was designed for.”
The tour included stops to show the completed embankment, and the spillway and that will soon start construction, as well as some of the erosion areas around the lake and how they impact constituents.
“When it comes to public safety, it is important that we communicate openly with stakeholders and partners like Congressman Burgess and his constituents,” said Col. Stover. “What better way to do that than to bring him and his staff to the site of a major civil works construction project like Lewisville Dam? Today was a great opportunity for us to provide an update on the project so there is a better understanding of what we are doing here and why we are doing it.”
The Dam Safety Modification is a result of a March 2014 risk assessment where Lewisville Dam was confirmed as a high-urgency dam primarily due to potential loss of life consequences. The potential for internal erosion, embankment instability, or spillway instability or uplift could all result in a significant loss of life if they adversely affected the integrity of the dam. The likelihood of those failures occurring is low and will be lower still after the project, but risk will remain high due to the potential loss of life and economic impacts.
All work on the earthen embankment, the first of three separate actions for the Lewisville Dam Safety Modification, was completed in 2021. The contract for modifications to the spillway was awarded earlier this year and is expected to be complete in 2026. Monitoring and adaptive management of the environmental restoration portion of the project will be completed by the Lewisville Aquatic Ecosystem Research Facility into 2027.
For more information on Lewisville Dam, visit https://www.swf.usace.army.mil/Home/Lewisville-Lake-Dam/.=
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