National Geographic program explores 'tough fix' of John Day Dam
Lou Marzeles
News Editor
Sean Riley wants you to know what the John Day Dam has to do with your living room.
"Transportation up and down the Columbia River accounts for a huge amount of goods into the northwestern part of the United States," he said in a phone interview with The Sentinel. According to statistics cited in Riley's popular National Geographic television show World's Toughest Fixes, some $15 billion of goods annually are carried on the Columbia.
"This is grain for your table, gas for your car, all sorts of important goods that you're buying off the shelves at your stores," Riley emphasizes. So when the lock gate on the John Day Dam was broken in a barge encounter, it had to be fixed. The project was of such an enormous scale that Riley and his staff picked it for an episode of World's Toughest Fixes; the episode, entitled "Columbia River Dam," airs in our area July 16 at 9 p.m. on the National Geographic Channel (NatGeo).
Riley's show deals with repairs required on giant machines and equipment all around the world. Himself a professional rigger, Riley has become well known to couch-potato engineers for his red hair, wiry frame, and readiness to go where very few people ever to get to go.
In the case of the John Day Dam, that meant helping to rig the 200,000-pound repaired lock gate onto a barge, taking it more than a hundred miles up river to the dam, and placing the enormous gate with pin-point accuracy into place. He also got to go play in the bowels of the dam, where gigantic propellers are driven by rushing waters to generate enough power to light up two Seattles.
Riley finds this particular dam unique in a number of respects. "The John Day lock is a very unique piece of engineering," he says. "It used to be the highest head built anywhere; I think there's one other now in China somewhere that's higher, but this is certainly the highest head anywhere in the western hemisphere." By "head" Riley means the elevation of water at its lowest point and at its highest point; the differential between these is the head.
"As boats come into the bottom of the John Day, they're raised about 113 feet so they can meet the water level at the top end," Riley points out. "That's a very, very tall head for a lock."
As well, the dam has unusual gates on its lock. "The down-river side has an overhanging gate, which is quite cool and unique as well," Riley says. "So ships actually sail underneath the gate, and the gate then comes down on top of them from behind."
It was actually a barge on its way through the gate that broke it. "The circumstances under which it was damaged were really dramatic," Riley recalls. "It was textbook catastrophic failure. As the gate was rising up, there were several breakdowns in the protocol that should have been observed." Riley can't go into much detail, given that the incident is in ongoing litigation, but the events are dramatically shown in the show through the use of striking computer graphics. "A barge, while it was being raised and the water let in, managed to get its nose under the upstream gate," Riley recounts. "It pulled it up a little bit. As it pulled the upstream gate up, it provided a path for the water. The water pressure has a tremendous amount of force to it, so once it got flowing under the gate, it just lifted up this huge multi-ton gate like a house of cards. It threw it up onto its side." The gate's edge and sides bent so much out of shape that it was immediately unusable.
It took some six months to repair the gate at a welding shop near Portland. The show has detailed computer graphics and video of the dam's interim solution while waiting for the repaired gate. This involved using something called a coffer dam, essentially a huge plug that could be tugged into place along the dam, then made to sink to plug the space where the lock used to be. The process was extremely costly, since specialized crews had to be on duty 24/7 to accommodate the river traffic. The very use of such a measure demonstrated the importance of the waterway as a commerce thoroughfare.
Riley's show then follows the repaired gate's journey up the river on a barge and to its final replacement in the dam lock.
"The repaired gate was lifted up back onto a barge, then we took it up river, through pretty extreme weather, actually," Riley recalls. "We had to go over a hundred miles up river, through the other down-stream locks, just to get the gate to the actual lock itself." On the journey, the crew hit what Riley calls "classic Gorge weather," with sudden wind gusts of 65 to 70 miles per hour, turning the enormous two-ton gate, sitting sideways on the barge, into a massive sail.
Once on site, Riley and the crew had to lift the gate off the barge using two cranes in synchronized maneuvers. The gate had to be turned sideways and then dropped back into place along narrow slots that had to fit the gate perfectly. The show reveals the extent of the precision required to accomplish all this-and how difficult such precision, on such a scale, can be.
"Then we had to reconnect all the cables and counterweights, so we give a story on how the lock operates in the show," Riley says. "It's counterweighted by giant concrete blocks inside big shafts stuck in the ground on either side of the river; these allow the gate to rise and fall. The motors needed to actually lift a gate that heavy would be impossibly huge. So they use counterweights that have weight almost equal to the weight of the gate."
Riley says his shows bring him into constant contact with highly sensitive critical infrastructure. "Because of the nature of what we work on," he says, "we rub elbows with Homeland Security a lot. These are considered 'high-value' targets."
Java Talk community discussion begins
The first meeting of Java Talk, The Sentinel's new community discussion program, went well last Friday, as a group of readers met with General Manager Karen Henslee and News Editor Lou Marzeles. The conversation covered a broad range, from talk of the recent KLCK article in the newspaper to area geology.
A short history of how the program came about started the meeting. (The idea first emerged after KLCK initially announced its decision to close its Goldendale studio and stop its popular morning call-in talk shows.) A few broad guidelines were outlined at the start of the meeting, which included keeping conversation civil and letting it be known when particular comments are meant to be off the record. (This meeting, as will subsequent ones will be, was digitally recorded. Any participant is free to designate particular comments as being off the record, in which case they will not be publicly disclosed.)
It is anticipated that stories of interest will arise from the Friday morning program, as participants exchange thoughts and concerns. On occasions, such as the first meeting last week, the conversation will simply allow for congenial conversation and an airing out of personal interests on any issue of community concern.
Plans are being studied to post the digital recordings of the weekly meetings online, to be available as podcasts.
The next meeting is this Friday morning from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. at Sodbuster's Restaurant.
Appellation marks fourth anniversary with tour, BBQ
The Horse Heaven Hills trail drive scholarship and park fund raiser occurs Saturday, July 18, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wineries and vineyards of the Horse Heaven Hills Wine Growers are celebrating the fourth anniversary of the Horse Heaven Hills appellation. Wineries and tasting rooms taking part in this annual event are: Columbia Crest, Canoe Ridge Estate, Alexandria Nicole, Heaven's Cave, Canyon's Edge, Chateau Champoux, and McKinley Springs. Wineries pouring at the park also include Coyote Canyon, Martinez & Martinez, and Robert Karl.
The public is invited to take a drive through the Horse Heaven Hills, enjoy the vistas, sip the elegant wines and view the extensive vineyards. An informative tour map has been developed to help with the tour. The event cost is $50 after July 11. Tickets includes an event glass, tour and tasting and BBQ dinner. Allow 4-5 hours for the tour. The event concludes with the Bar-B-Q, wine tasting, prizes and live music, by local artist Dale Brown, at Crow Butte Park, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. To secure tickets and make reservations for the BBQ call (509) 894-4528. |
