The road to a dam fix!

Only one small gate section remained up (far left)

Forsyth MO. - On June the 28th, 2019, the Powersite dam suffered a problem when a piece of debris managed to sever a pneumatic line that held the top portion of a moveable gate in the up position. After the failure, water levels on Taneycomo Lake to drop several feet from about 702' to 699' above mean sea level. This caused many docks to end up resting on the mud bottom all along the thirteen mile length of the lake. After that it was a waiting game as repairs could not be effected until the water level on the Bull Shoals side of the dam dropped to at least 685 feet!

So, a reasonable question might be, 'How long will we have to wait?'

Well, assuming a typical dry summer stretch that is often seen in July and August, the answer becomes one of simply looking at trend lines. That is, extending the average rate of the drop of water levels over a period of time in order to extrapolate how far in the future you have to go to get to that magic number 685! Here's the current graphic;

Note that if you click on the above graphic, you can see that the water level should have fallen to 685 feet by about August the 12th! That's assuming no heavy rains and a relatively constant rate of release at the Bull Shoals dam. A nice long dry spell all across the region could speed things up a bit, especially if the Mississippi also goes down to more normal levels!

Update: July 27 - Newly established water level trends would seem to indicate that Bull Shoals could drop to acceptable levels for a dam repair by early August.

  Update: July 29 - Gates had been repaired and water levels on Taneycomo were coming back up!

This media release from Liberty Utilities: 'Crews were able to safely access flood damages at our Ozark Beach dam yesterday, July 29, at 11 a.m. Crews were able to replace a damaged airline, which when repaired, allowed all three sections of flood gates to be raised. Taneycomo water levels reached their normal level of 699.75 ft. by 2 p.m. Until the Bull Shoals lake levels drop, water will continue to go over the dam rather than through our generators. Liberty Utilities personnel are evaluating the incident and options for preventing similar flood damage in the future.

Plant Manager, Randy Richardson, says, “I’d like to thank everyone for their patience, and I’d like to thank our crews for their quick work once lake levels allowed for safe repairs. Improvements made to the dam in 2008 allowed us to make repairs more quickly than in past floods, and we will continue to look for ways to strengthen our equipment and improve service and reliability for our customers.”' J. Curtis Communications Media Coordinator-Assoc