Project Manager – Owners Representative
Position available immediately for an Owners Representative to manage the design and construction of a 5MW hydroplant in Lawrence, Kansas. Project completion expected early to mid 2012. Construction experience mandatory. Hydroelectric experience desirable, but not required. Salary and benefits commensurate with experience.

Send resume to:

The Bowersock Mills and Power Company
P.O. Box 66
Lawrence, Kansas 66044
staff@bowersockpower.com

Job Duties

• Project Coordination
  • Project Schedule – Experience with Primavera, Microsoft Project or similar scheduling program
    • Budget management
      • Value engineering
    • Regulatory compliance
      • City building permits and zoning
      • Coordination with Corps of Engineers
    • Equipment procurement
    • On-site construction management
    • Familiarity with hydropower and energy generation highly desirable

  Coordination with engineers, construction firms, architects, etc.

It’s been too long since I updated this.  There is so much going on it is tough to keep all the balls in the air, but we have moved forward on a lot of fronts since I last wrote.  This week the City completed land geotech, and next week we are scheduled for barge-based geotech upstream of the dam.  The results of the geotech will guide the dam repair which is scheduled to begin in November.  Long time coming and we are grateful for the forward progress.  Regarding the North Plant, there are no deal-killers as of yet.  Getting a stable dam is a critical piece of that.  We feel very good about how things have gone with the City and are optimistic about the potential to triple energy production on the Bowersock Dam.  According to the Secretary of the DOE, there is 70 gigawatts of potential hydro that can be developed at existing dams that are already in use for hydro, flood control, or water supply.   This means a lot of additional energy with limited environmental impact.  70 GW is 70 nuclear plants or 100 coal-fired power plants.  BMPC is just a small part of the picture but as David Orr says, there is no silver bullet, only silver buckshot.

As of early March, it looks like we have forward motion on repairs to the dam.  We are particularly relieved because City Commissioners agreed that building a coffer dam is critical to the next stage of repairs to the dam.  Without a coffer dam, there is no way we could ensure that the repairs could be done.  We have been waiting for a window of low water to do repairs for the last two years.  Without a coffer dam, we could be waiting indefinitely.  Equally important, the construction of a coffer dam will allow the repairs to be done efficiently and effectively, something we believe would have been extremely difficult if not impossible under the previous plan of conducting the repairs without a coffer dam.  Certainly it made a difference that we were able to get a bid on a coffer dam that was substantially lower than what Black and Veatch had predicted.  Black and Veatch had given a number in a FERC conference call of one million dollars… which we thought seemed pretty darn high.  Fortunately, we were able to find another firm that would do the coffer dam for @ $350,000 - a significant savings to what Black and Veatch had proposed.  Whew!!!  The City is currently taking a look at this alternative proposal.  We are hopeful we’ll be able to make this happen.  Not only will a coffer dam ensure that the repairs can get done and that they will be done more efficiently and effectively, but drying out the dam through the use of a coffer dam will allow us to get a good look at the upstream side of the dam - something that hasn’t happened since 1978.  Certainly we could find just about anything when we expose that upstream face, but Bowersock feels strongly that it is better to understand what we are dealing with than to catastrophize about potential problems about which we know very little.  We are hopeful that the Bowersock Dam will be one of the many timber crib structures in the United States that have lasted well over 100 years and are predicted to last at least another 100.  There are engineering firms that are not comfortable with old structures because they can’t certify them, but there are others that have significant experience in restoring old structures, saving communities millions of dollars in the process.

As many people saw in the Journal World, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has required Bowersock to keep its millpond at damtop.  We can go into this at greater length later, but this will make things very difficult for Bowersock, and over the long term for the City and the University of Kansas Boathouse.  In essence FERC had to do this because there was a report on file that suggested the dam could be in imminent danger of failing.  Since they are responsible for “dam safety,” they had to take action and require Bowersock to put less pressure on the dam by keeping the levels as low as possible.  We hope to remedy this by expediting our dam repair project.  We are working hard with the City of Lawrence to make this happen.  Later I’ll give a full explanation of why the City of Lawrence is responsible for maintenance of the dam, but in short, the dam backs up water for the City’s water supply.  So once we received the order from FERC, we went out on the dam last Monday and again today to try to get the boards down.  Monday we had ice, weather, and equipment issues.  Usually we don’t get out on the dam when the water is this high.  Today Rich and I went out on the dam to try to drop 15 doors.  We were making some changes to how we wanted to use the cable way and all of the sudden the river came up about a foot.  This was probably due to an ice jam breaking upstream.  (It is warm today!)  When the supports started cracking behind the doors we hustled off the dam pretty quickly.  The water levels are projected to go down another 1,000 cfs over the weekend so we’ll give it another shot on Monday.  Here are some photos of us beginning the process of getting the doors down before the water came up.  It’s not worth it to get anyone hurt and given that those doors weigh around 700 lbs. we need to be really cautious in this undertaking.

This was just before the water came up.

Rich and Sarah get ready to drop the doors.

It looks like we may have a good hand here.  Touch wood… Currently we have low water below 2,000 cfs predicted for early next week.  The Corps has been very responsive and communicative as we have worked for this window which has been extremely helpful.  Barring any major precipitation we have scheduled a visit from the FERC Chicago Office to come down and inspect the dam which is planned for 8:00 AM on Tuesday morning.  Wouldn’t you know we would get low water right in the midst of the inaugural speech.  Never mind that, we are grateful for the opportunity to get out on the dam.  We are rounding up our crew to get out there and it looks like we may even have some warmer weather early next week.

A note on the history on the site, Dad has said there are quite a few errors which we are going to correct asap.  It just requires a window of time to sit down and do it.  The website was originally put together with a grant from the Kansas Corporation Commission.  Pinnacle Technology put most of it together for us and they did a very good job with the information they had available.  We’ll continue to try to put more time into the website to make sure all the history is accurate and that we keep it up to date.  We are glad to see that we even have people that read it from time to time!  Feel free to send in comments about Bowersock if you have some history about which we might not be aware!

The Corps is now beginning to do their winter drawdowns from the reservoirs so the cfs at the Lecompton gauge and at Bowersock is predicted to be around 10,000 cfs for the next 10 to 14 days.  After that (depending on precipitation) we should have much lower flows.  It could possibly be a good window to work on the dam and have FERC visit but it could also be absolutely bittterly cold so we’ll see how it goes.  If we could get the dam repairs done, get the missing flashboards replaced, and replace the leaking Obermeyer bags it would make for a lot better spring for us.  We are hoping for dry weather through December (okay so maybe we could get a few inches to play in between Christmas and New Years!) and then if we could have a nice warm spell in January that would be great.  Warm is all relative though.  Right now it is pretty chilly out there.

We spoke with the Corps of Engineers today and it looks like we won’t have a window to work on the dam until mid-January or more likely February.  The Corps keeps water in the reservoirs for waterfowl season until the lakes start to freeze, at which point they drop the levels to try to minimize freezing damage to docks, marinas, etc.  Between the natural flows and reservoir management it doesn’t look like we’ll get our window for work any time soon.  Both the City of Lawrence and Bowersock have planned repairs that require the river CFS to be around 2,000.  Doing dam repairs and replacing missing doors in February could be a pretty brutal task, but if we don’t do it before the rains start in March it is likely we wouldn’t be able to get out on the dam again until next August.

We are trying to categorize our posts now.  Use the category feature to chose a topic or click on “Most Recent” for the latest at Bowersock.  Thanks!