Members of the Canadian Dam Association and others interested in the dam industry in British Columbia are getting together to learn and share.
| 5:30 pm - 6:00 pm | Social Hour - Appetizers will be provided |
| 6:00 pm - 6:30 pm | Technical Presentation 1: Design and Construction of an Auxiliary Labyrinth Spillway for an Ageing Dam Jenna Simzer, P.Eng. and Thomas Madden P.Eng. - Geotechnical Engineers, Golder Associates Ltd. |
| 6:30 pm - 7:00 pm | Technical Presentation 2: Revision to CDA Dam Safety Guidelines: Environmental Consequence Classification Procedures for Mining Dams (Draft) Lee Nikl, M.Sc., R.P.Bio. - Principal/Senior Environmental Scientist, Golder Associates Ltd. |
| 7:00 pm onwards | Networking |
Abstracts of the presentations are available on this webpage.
Fee:
$10 for CDA members
$15 for non-members
Includes GST.
Cash only at the door.
Memberships will be available at the door.
Space is limited, and last year's event sold out, so register now!
Registration: Jenna_Simzer@golder.com
Two cascading dams were constructed in 1910 for water supply purposes in Nanaimo, British Columbia, located on the west coast of Canada. The dams were decommissioned in 1945 and were then used as recreational facilities in a municipal park upstream of what is now a residential/commercial area. Dam safety and deficiency investigations carried out for the dams have indicated that, under Canadian Dam Association (CDA) Guidelines, the dams are unable to satisfy the design criteria for the assigned Consequence Classification. Studies were carried out to identify the most appropriate and cost-effective dam safety remediation works to bring the dams into regulatory compliance. An auxiliary labyrinth spillway was selected to provide a means to generate additional spillway capacity to address the flood risks without impacting the existing spillway at the downstream dam. The presentation will discuss the geotechnical, hydrotechnical and environmental issues associated with the design and construction of the auxiliary spillway.
Jenna Simzer is a geotechnical engineer out of Golder Associates’ Vancouver office with over 12 years of experience in geotechnical engineering investigation and design for numerous infrastructure projects. Jenna has been involved with inspections and management of several water retention dams from low to extreme consequence classification in BC including the Lake 7 dam in Port Mellon, Ponds 6 and 7 dams on Stuart Island, and Sasamat Lake dam in Belcarra. She managed the team that designed and constructed an auxiliary labyrinth spillway at the Lower Colliery dam in Nanaimo, BC and the team involved with the underwater remote survey and repair of the upstream face of the Lake 7 Dam. She is currently remotely managing Golder’s engineering services for construction of the John Compton Dam starter dyke in Saint Lucia. She also assisted with the dam safety reviews for the Jumbo and Good Friday tailings storage facilities in Rossland and the inspections and repair work at the Mount Copeland tailings dam in Revelstoke. Jenna will be presenting at the ICOLD 2019 conference in Ottawa on behalf of her team.
Thomas Madden is a geotechnical engineer in Golder’s Vancouver office with over eight years of experience in geotechnical engineering investigation, analyses and design, and construction inspection for projects across the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, BC. Thomas was the project engineer providing geotechnical engineering input to the design and construction of the auxiliary spillway structure at Colliery Dam, Nanaimo, BC. He also assisted with the geotechnical investigation for the Ruskin Dam upgrades in Mission, BC. Thomas is currently involved in a number of civil infrastructure, land development, mine closure, and natural hazards projects.
The environmental consequences of dam failures has received considerable global attention in recent times. To help inform the design criteria, frequency of monitoring and inspections, requirements for emergency preparedness plans/emergency response plans, and other operational considerations, the Canadian Dam Association (CDA) uses a dam failure consequence classification system.
The environmental component of the existing consequence classification system lacks a clear scientific basis and uses vaguely defined classification criteria. A proposed new science-based system that addresses these shortcomings has been developed by a Working Group of the CDA Mining Dams Committee. The proposed environmental classification system, which is structured around habitat loss for species of special interest has been beta-tested using a recent dam failure (positive control) and an existing dam (test scenario) with favorable results in terms of classification and level of inquiry.
Lee Nikl is a Principal and Senior Environmental Scientist with Golder Associates’ Mine Environment Division. He is a Registered Professional Biologist (R.P.Bio.) with over 29 years of professional experience.
Lee has been involved in some of the most significant damage assessment and rehabilitation projects in Canada and internationally, such as the Mount Polley and Samarco tailings dam failures in British Columbia, Canada and Minas Gerais, Brazil where he led Golder’s technical program to assess chemical and physical impacts of the failures and to rehabilitate the physical environment. In the Kingdom of Jordan, Lee led an ecological damage assessment of the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in support of a claim against the Republic of Iraq.
Other projects he has been involved with included the Wabamun Lake, AB oil spill, Pembina Pipelines oil spill at Chetwynd, BC, a mercury spill in the Peruvian Andes, Burrard Inlet oil spill and numerous other chemical spills and fish kills. Lee is currently the chair of the Mine Dam Failure Environmental Consequences working group for the Canadian Dam Association (Mining Dams Committee).
