The Westside Board of Directors cast their final vote Tuesday night, October 26, to permanently close Longleaf Drive over Lake Auman Dam. But their vote may not put an end to the matter, just yet.
During the same meeting, the Dam Road Group, organized by Westsider Mike Gorenflo, presented Secretary Karen Milligan with signatures representing 246 lots, petitioning for a special meeting of the membership to vote on the road closure. The Board's Legal Director, Ed Silberhorn, said the Board cannot be forced by a popular vote to change its position.
Adding more fuel to the public debate on the issue, the Board released a strongly-worded rebuttal, prepared by Dam Engineer Dr. Dan Marks, attacking an informal critique of the Lake Auman Dam remediation prepared by James Weldon, a dam safety engineer employed by the Denver,CO, Water Department. Weldon's analysis, prepared as a favor to Westsider Jim Johnson, has not been released by either Johnson or the Board, but allegedly contains "inflammatory" statements about the quality of the dam remediation and the overall safety of the dam.
Decision unanimous
All nine members of the Westside Board were present at Tuesday's meeting, and all nine voted in favor of President Ron Shepard's motion to "permanently close" Longleaf Drive over Lake Auman Dam, after first hearing input from a dozen landowners. Much of that input drew applause from the more than one hundred landowners in attendance, who seemed evenly divided amongst partisans on both sides of the debate.
The Board also heard from Joan Frost the results of a survey on the issue that asked the membership whether they supported the Board's intention to close the road or opposed it "regardless of the potential risk, liability, or cost to myself or the community."
After weeding out the unsigned or improperly marked forms, Frost said, 869 usable survey forms were collected. Of those, 716 supported the Board's position and 129 opposed it.
Silberhorn pointed out that this meant eighty-five percent supported the decision to close the road; Gorenflo countered that many landowners who opposed the Board's position refused to return the form in protest of what he called the "biased" wording.
Special meeting likely
The Dam Road Group's petition for a special meeting asks for a vote of the membership on whether the dam road should be reopened, with gated access, to vehicular traffic by member and resident vehicles. If that motion is approved, the petition lays out in considerable detail a process for investigating options for reopening the road, including subsequent votes of the membership once a plan for reopening the road is developed.
The SLWLA bylaws require the signatures of ten percent of the voting eligible membership in order to call the meeting; according to information provided during Tuesday's meeting by Manager Frost, that would amount to 172 or 173 of the 1722 current voting lots. With 246 signed petitions submitted, it seems likely the special meeting will go forward.
Speaking with The Times after Tuesday's meeting, both President Shepard and Legal Director Silberhorn were as yet unsure how a special meeting and associated vote of the membership will be handled, including whether a ballot would be included in the meeting notice, as is the common practice with Annual Meetings. Silberhorn encouraged the eighty-five percent who indicated support for the Board's position in the recent survey to be sure to attend the the special meeting.
Marks rebuts ‘second opinion’
In a report marred by testy exchanges with members of the audience, Silberhorn said the Westside's Dam Engineer, Dr. Dan Marks, had reviewed and prepared a rebuttal to an informal report prepared by Denver Dam Engineer James Weldon that questions "the present safety of the Lake Auman Dam." [Download a copy of Marks' rebuttal here.] Silberhorn said that, in a seeming contradiction, Weldon's report also indicates that the road over the dam could be safely reopened.
Neither the Board nor Westsider Jim Johnson, who contacted Weldon for an informal second opinion on the dam remediation and road closure issue, have released Weldon's report to the public. Johnson insisted during the meeting that his agreement in sharing the report with the Board prohibits them from releasing it. The Board did release Mark's rebuttal, which provides some insight into the questions raised by the Colorado Engineer.
The dam remediation completed in the Spring of 2009 principally involved the use of a vibrating beam to create a vertical trench in the embankment of the dam. As the beam moved across the center portion of the dam, the trench was immediately filled with a water-resistant slurry of concrete and clay. The repair was undertaken because piezometer measurements of the water level in the dam, as well the dampness of soil in locations on the backside of the dam, indicated that the dam's core was not adequately resisting the seepage of water through the structure. The new slurry wall is designed to force that seepage to occur lower in the dam, where it belongs.
Weldon's report apparently questioned both the length and depth of the slurry wall design and cited post-remediation data taken from piezometer readings and water flows from the dams' subdrains to suggest the repair had not been completely successful. Marks' rebuttal quotes Weldon as writing that "Auman Dam is in poor condition. Based on the information provided, it is closer to a potential failure than others may be stating and assuming."
Marks complains that Weldon is not a licensed NC engineer, did not contact Marks or or the remediation contractor for information before preparing his report, did not visit or inspect the dam, and was working with incomplete data and an incomplete understanding of the remediation. Johnson asserts that the Board refused to provide him with a full set of plans, drawings, and data to provide to Weldon.
Marks reports that he was "somewhat outraged" and "deeply saddened" by Weldon's report, which he repeatedly calls "incredible." He writes that he regards Weldon's "highly critical opinions" as an affront to his "education, experience, expertise, and integrity," and, in response, used one-and-one-half pages of his nine-page rebuttal to recount his professional credentials. Marks indicates he plans to report what he calls Weldon's "professional misconduct" to the NC Dam Safety Engineer and the Director of the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Marks also said he will demand an letter of apology from the City of Denver and is weighing whether to file a formal complaint with the NC Board of Registration for Engineers and Land Surveyors.
As to the substance of Weldon's concerns, Marks says "I stand by my previously issued opinions and dismiss the 'second opinion' for the reasons stated."
Following Silberhorn's presentation of the rebuttal, Lake & Dam Director Mick Herdrich said some of the piezometer sites in the dam have been damaged and will need to be replaced.
Recent inspection of the back side of the dam reveals that "it is about as dry as I have ever seen it," he added, also noting that the water flowing from the drains at the bottom of the dam were clear instead of clouded with material, presumably from the dam's deteriorating core, as has been the case in the past.
