The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1912-03-28
WHY NO DANGER
TO kE0kUk Dam.
Away Back In January the Water
Power Engineer Calculated 40
curately What Would Hap
pen and Prepared.
WORKED OUT PERFECTLY
The Mississippi Was Guided Like ;
Calf In a Halter by the Piers
Built to Keep II at Arms
Length.

Sensational fake reports sent broad
cast under Keokuk date line last
Sunday, stating that the big dam
here was injured and the power house
carried down stream, have attracted
general attention to the measures
taken by the water power company
to prevent any possibility of actua,
damage to the great construction
works and their contents in the Mis-.
sissippi river here. The state of pre-
paredness of the company is not the
least of its achievements in engineer
ing.
1t was known long ago that the ice
in the river was of exceptional thick
ness, one measurement near Nauyoo
showing 1t to be thirty inches thick
at that spot Therefore. when the ice
ran out after breaking up. 1t was
known last January that there would
be great forces at work in the river
here some day in March.
Problems Worked Out Carefully.
The problem was to prepare for a
very large quantity of very heavy leo
to rush through the narrowed chan
mel at the site of the dam, under con-
ditions of high water which always
occur from the ice gorge that nearly
always forms at Warsaw.
Careful calculations were made OF
the way the ice would move past the
works and the energy with which 1t
would strike any obstruction. as the
cofferdam wall. To every result OF the
| figuring there was added big factor
of safety with what Chief Engineer
Cooper calls bone sense, after the
engineering figures are made. Then
it was known just what to do, to pre-
vent any damage being done.
A Wall Made lnvincible
The work of preparation fell into
two sorts. There was the upper end
of the big cofferdam which would be
bonrbarded by the Ice striking it d.
rectly, squarely and fairly. This was
considered strong enough to with
stand the strains coming upon it
when the ice broke up and went out;
but to make assurance doubly sure,
it was strengthened slightly and
weighted heavily with loaded cars OH
| the track on its top.
When the expected happened ana
the ice piled up against it in wave
the crest of which surged thirty feet
above the river bottom, this Golfer
dam wall did not even shiver- be-
cause 1t was made to withstand sew
eral times that bombardment by the
man who cofferda.med water sixty
five feet deep on the brink Of Niaga ara.
4 The River Led by Halter.
4 The other and in fact greater thing
to prepare against was the effect of the
large quantity of ice that would shoot
through the narrowed channel between
the end of the dam and the corner OF
the power house cofferdam. Back in
January halter was put on the
Mississippi by which in March it was
led past that place at safe distance
and it never scratched that wall in
passing.
Piers of cribs filled with rock were
built out from the wall into the river
the longest at the upper end and the
shortest at the lower end of the big
cofferdam wall. These pushed the
current over away from the wall and
in fact when the ice and flood came
the water was dead along the Golfer
dam wall and the ice moving many
feet away from the wall it otherwise
would have scraped. It was prepar
edness gaining great victory over
the Mississippi in spasm.