State officials celebrated the completion of repairs made to Hearns Pond Dam near Seaford on Tuesday.
The dam now has a wider spillway and new culverts, which will help it survive future storms. It is the first dam to meet new state dam safety regulations.
Officials from the Department of Transportation and Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control partnered to repair Hearns Pond Dam to help it meet regulations that require dams to survive large storm events without failing.
State dam safety engineer Janice Shute said Hearns Pond Dam is now up to those standards.
“The spillway that’s designed now can not only pass an ‘100-year storm’, but it can pass this much larger storm — it’s a storm that’s about 60 percent larger than an 100 year storm. And it can pass that storm with the elevation of the water being much lower,” Shute said.
Former state dam safety engineer David Twing said the dam completely washed out in 2001. It was rebuilt in 2002.
“But there were no dam safety regulations then so there were no standards for construction to withstand storms,” Twing said.
The dam overtopped in 2006, and was rebuilt in 2007.
In 2009, the state adopted its Dam Safety Regulations, establishing requirements and allowing for repairs to be made to existing dams.
Hearns Pond Dam was ranked the highest priority dam in need of repairs in 2013. The state spent $4.2 million in construction costs from both DNREC and DelDOT’s budgets to improve the infrastructure.
Now, it’s safer for tourists to walk by, said Hildegard Riegar, the executive director and a a tour guide for the Nanticoke Heritage Byway.
“You didn’t feel safe even walking as far as where we are even walking across. But this — what they have done is beautiful. It really is well preserved and you feel safe now walking around,” Riegar said.
And DelDOT is confident in the safety of the dam and that it will hold up during future storms, said Jason Hastings, a project manager for DelDOT.
“Obviously Mother Nature can do what it wants. There’s no guarantees in life, but we’re pretty confident that this dam is gonna last a very long time,” Hastings said.
Officials say they expect the dam to last for at least a century.
The state has identified 40 other dams that need to be updated. Last year, the state identified 42 dams of concern (including Hearns Pond Dam), but Twing said one was reclassified as a lower hazard, and was removed from the list.
Next on the list for repairs is Records Pond Dam in Laurel. Officials expect that project to be completed in Fiscal Year 2019.
