After flooding, town will step up dam watch

UPDATED: The storm came in strong, and it hit when the ground was already saturated with water from Tropical Storm Ophelia. So, the runoff from the surrounding hills into Lake Lucille was heavier than expected.

By Friday morning, September 29, the lake’s water level had overflowed the banks in many places, submerging most of the beach and many trees along the edge. Concerned about the water volume flowing through the dam, Glenn Rose took the initiative to call Clarkstown’s engineering department, asking them to check the dam and possibly open the sluice gate to ease the pressure. Easier said than done, though!

A crew from the town arrived soon after; they said that the Lake Lucille dam is on their list of regular storm-inspection locations and that they were checking it that day anyway. They agreed to open the sluice gate, but it hadn’t been operated in many years and the mechanism seemed nearly frozen in place.

Painstakingly, the crew worked for more than an hour to finally open the reticent gate by several inches. Fortunately, by this time, the rain was easing up and the lake’s water level was beginning to recede, so there was lessening concern.

The effort raised a red flag for Michael Gianatasio, the relatively new director of Clarkstown’s Department of Engineering & Facilities Management. While watching the crew’s ongoing efforts, he said that he plans to step up regular inspections of the dam and sluice gate to every six months, hopefully avoiding another difficult situation like this. He also mentioned that he’d like to install an easier way of opening the gate, so it could be done more quickly, perhaps using a wheel instead of the current, difficult system of turning a long pole with wrenches.

That’s good news for the community, although we hope we never need to see that new system actually needed.