City of Newark Dams Department of Water and Sewer Utilities

Our dam engineering group has provided dam engineering services to the City of Newark—from inspections to rehabilitation designs—for over 30 years (as Civil Dynamics and, since 2018, as GZA).

Challenge

Helping the City maintain its network of dams, some of which were constructed over 120 years ago, has required a full suite of dam engineering skills as well as an understanding of the City’s budgetary constraints and protocols.

Solution

GZA’s services include inspections as needed for all 16 of the City’s dams, including six Large, Class I – High Hazard dams. Additionally, we prepared a Regional Emergency Action Plan for the Large dams and conducted dam safety training to maintenance personnel.

We have also prepared rehabilitation designs for the larger dams and helped the City obtain grant money to implement the rehabilitation work. Our rehabilitation design and construction phase services have included major concrete repairs, spillway improvements, discharge channel armoring, and valve and gate replacement or repairs. GZA has also completed updated hydrologic and hydraulic analyses and stability analyses of several dams, and the design for replacement of the 200-foot-long Bascule gate at one of the Large, Class I – High Hazard dams, the Charlotteburg Dam.

Benefit

The institutional knowledge that GZA dam engineers bring to each Newark project provides valuable insight and allows GZA to cost-effectively support the Department of Water and Sewer Utilities as it serves the citizens of Newark, the state’s largest city.