The Gilboa Dam is a small 37 meter high concrete and stone brick dam along the Schoharie creek in Schoharie county in the State of New York, which has been marred with many recent concerns about it’s structural integrity.
It was constructed in 1926 and remained unserviced until 2005, when the city of New York believed that it had to be updated for the safety of those downstream. This project cost $24 million dollars. In 2011 a complete update was set to be underway, that would cost around $350 million. So worried about a possible dam failure, the county created a dam failure warning system with twenty sirens posted by nearby towns.
During Hurricane Irene, this year, the reservoir received a foot of rain and officials believed the dam was at a potential to fail, which led to the evacuation of Middleburgh and Schoharie. The dam was once more hit by two earthquakes over a two week period but inspections showed that no damage was done. The dam does not currently create any power but rather serves it’s purpose as just damming up the river.
The creation of the reservoir caused the relocation of the town of Gilboa in the 1920′s. The reservoir is now 9.6km long and contains 17.6 billion gallons of water. Some 9 million people receive 15% of their annual needs of water from the reservoir. In the late 1800′s a fossilized forest was found in Gilboa which is now known to be the oldest fossilized forest in the world. The reservoir is one of the smallest reservoirs in the state of New York.
