Bluestone Dam

Brayman was contracted by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to provide specialty construction services for several Phases of the Dam Safety Assurance (DSA) of the Bluestone Dam located one and a half miles upstream of Hinton, WV.  The Bluestone Dam is a conventional concrete gravity dam situated on the New River approximately one-half mile upstream of the confluence with the Greenbrier River.

As a flood risk management project designed and built by the USACE, the main body of the dam is comprised of 55 concrete monoliths. The structure has an overall length of 2,048-feet, and reaches a maximum height of 165-feet above the stream bed. Some key elements of the job are:

• Concrete Batch Plant
  ‍- Due to the 90,000-CY of concrete, erection and operation of an on-site wet batch concrete plant was necessary. The concrete batch plant is accredited by the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association and meets the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ specifications for aggregate rewash and rescreening with cooling equipment to maintain a maximum mass concrete temperature of 65°F.

• High Capacity Dam Anchors
  ‍- 1,150 additional anchors will be installed in various locations throughout the dam including the spillway, training walls, wier, and through all new concrete placed on the project.

• Excavation
  ‍- 57,000CY of Rock excavation in the stilling basin and processing of the rock onsite for future placement of over 100,000-CY of embankment material.

• Exploratory Program
  ‍- 26 hole exploratory program with pressure testing and geophysical logging.

• Grout Curtain
  ‍- The grout curtain feature of work was prescribed as downstage-type with five general zonal targets of concern and consisted of coring 3-in nominal diameter boreholes; from withing the 6-ft x 8-ft gallery of the dam.