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Whaley Bridge Evacuated


eggsarascal
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14 hours ago, openspaceman said:

You have it.

 

If you look at the early pictures you can see vegetation growing through the joints in the slabs, once water gets through these and  scours out a tiny bit of soil under the slabs  the static water give the slab a bit of buoyancy, then when the velocity of water flowing over the slab increase the Bernoulli effect (same as sucks petrol from a carb's venturi) can actually suck the slab up a bit.

 

I imagine at this time of year they like to keep the reservoir full, in order to service all the extra lock movements generated by boating holiday makers, as this would normally be a dry period. Exceptional rain and limited means to discharge it and a full reservoir meant the dam was over topped  at the spillway as it was supposed to but the construction of the spillway plus failure of the waterproofing led to this loss of soil. The soil is what protects the clay core, which is what makes the dam watertight plus the shear weight of soil is what resists the hydrostatic force of the water, this is why it's serious, the potential loss of more mass of soil by scouring if the dam is over topped again.

 

It is probably just another phenomenon  of a more energetic weather system.

 

Much of the above from discussion with the owner of a narrow boat I occasionally crew who has an old style engineering degree.

I'll have some of this but not all of it. CaRT, since BW was disbanded have had no interest in maintaining the inland waterways for the people who use it for what it was originally design for, (working boats, there are still plenty about) and even less so for live aboards/pleasure boaters. The Marple flight on the peak forest is thirsty, being narrow with no way of conserving water apart from the reservoir, simple solution would be to close the locks between hours of darkness, I realise that hire boaters aren't supposed to move in the dark but many do because they have to kick on to get the most out of a very expensive holiday, along with full timers who can move when they like. I still can't find an answer to why CaRT didn't start draining before the damn started to fail. CaRT could have opened the locks on the cut, and the Goyt and let millions of gallons go. Afraid of upsetting the hire companies if they ran short of water later in the year?

Edited by eggsarascal
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