Dirty Job: Court Street Dam Gate Chamber Cleaning

Court Street Dam is a 100-year-old dam owned and operated by the New York State Canal Corporation (NYSCC), a subsidiary corporation of the New York Power Authority (NYPA). The dam consists of four sector gates which function as the structure’s impounding mechanism. Gates are individually raised and lowered through a system of water controls affecting the buoyancy of each sector gate. Over time, river water used to adjust the gates causes sediment accumulation in the chamber of each gate. This reduces the operating range of the gates, making operation, maintenance, and inspection more challenging. Due to changes in regulatory requirements sediment can no longer be removed from gate chambers by flushing it back into the river. In 2021, the NYPA/NYSCC elected to have a third-party contractor remove sediment by pumping it into a barge and transporting it to a permitted disposal site. The work was performed to also allow for detailed structural inspections and surveys of each gate for long-term planning purposes. An independent engineering consultant monitored the work and performed the inspections. The project revealed numerous challenges in planning and execution ranging from operational challenges such as maintaining continuous operation of the dam during the work to management challenges related to successfully executing a project with six different organizational participants. Most importantly, there were safety challenges related to working in permit-required confined spaces, at heights, and on and over the water, introduction of a new lockout/tagout protocol, multiple high-water events, and performing the entire project during the COVID-19 pandemic on an extremely small site.