Tooting Todd's Horn!

With each passing day I am learning more about the complex, frustrating, but truly remarkable world of construction. Although natural landscape can not be rivaled, the human ability to design and construct is mind-blowing.

The spillway and dam wall

Standing on top of the wall looking at the intake tower 

 I first saw the dam two years ago on a family day. The usual strictly guarded gates are opened up to the workers’ family and friends for a casual day of bbq-ing and tours around the site. I remember piling into the bus and bumping along dirt roads flanked by piles of more dirt and clay. Over the hum of other families, the rumble of the bus, and the designated tour guide trying in vain to explain what was outside the dusty windows, Todd explained how the clay had to be kept to a specific moisture content in order to be fit for the clay core of the dam wall. The weather dictated the work flow as the clay would have to be dried or wetted down by huge sprinklers depending on the day and its use. We passed the quarry where the rock for the wall was “harvested,” aka, “taken off “the mountain side next to the reservoir and the temporary office spaces and caravans scattered over the grounds like little base stations.

The main embankment looking at the intake tower

Seeing this same space two years later was astonishing. Gone were the piles of dirt and rock and in their place: perfectly manicured lawns, sculpture gardens and roads of newly laid asphalt. Todd’s main projects throughout the dam were, being in charge of the quarry, "Todd's road", the road built up over the dam wall to give park rangers’ access to the spillway in order to monitor the wall and ensure that it holds and does not cause seepage, and the main embankment, 70 million cubic feet of rock that holds in the water  and was the main earthwork project.  Additionally, Todd is a little bit of a tech genius (or so I think) and so he was in charge of all the gps machine guidance, which are basically computer systems installed on the big construction machines that allow the controller to follow the plans more closely. Todd is such a big shot in fact that you can read an article he contributed to in Technology and More Magazine (http://www.trimble.com/technologyandmore/i1-2009/ - page 8).  Cool, huh?

Other awesome facts about the dam: 

The 20 million dollar capture building!

-      - They spent $20 million constructing a fish capture station that sorts and saves fish that are native and critical to the dam’s ecosystem. 

-      - This stage of the dam (second major upgrade) raised the dam wall by 49 ft and increased the water capacity by 82,000 million gallons!

The dam is now a complete site for sore eyes, complete with a beautifully designed visitor’s center, many recreational areas for the hundreds of visitors expected every weekend, complete with the picturesque backdrop of the Gold Coast Hinterland.  I could not be prouder of him! 

Visitor's Center

View from beyond the Visitor's Center

The beautiful landscape (Todd's workplace!)