Field Trips (All field trips are closed.)
Army Corps | Riverfront Tour | Taum Sauk
US Army Corps of Engineers Field Trip on Monday (12:15-6:15pm)
St. Louis Corps Applied River Engineering Center and Mel Price L&D
Limit 55 participants!
Contact: Bob Holmes (bholmes@usgs.gov)
The first stop will be at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Applied River Engineering Center in St. Louis. In 1995, the Hydraulics Branch within the Engineering Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis District, established the Applied River Engineering Center (AREC). The primary purpose of AREC is to provide an office and hydraulic laboratory for conducting applied river engineering. The AREC has utilized micro models, which are extremely small scale, physical sediment transport models. AREC has had good success with the Micro models in replicating the mechanics fo the Mississippi River. Read more about the AREC at: http://www.mvs.usace.army.mil/eng-con/expertise/arec.html
The next part of the tour will be to go aboard one of the Corps of Engineers hydrographic surveying vessels. Whether it be the M/V Simpson or the M/V Boyer, each vessel is capable of collecting survey-grade 3-D channel bathometry and river velocities. The vessel is capable of 3-D hydrographic data collection using GPS with side-scan and multi-beam sonar instruments.
The tour will conclude with a visit to Melvin Price Locks and Dam on the Mississippi River. Every year, millions of tons of commodities pass through the Melvin Price Locks and Dam. The facility is located south of the majestic Clark Bridge near Alton, Illinois on the Upper Mississippi River at river mile 200.78, two miles downstream from the original Lock and Dam No. 26. The Melvin Price Locks and Dam helps to control the flow of the Mississippi and is the means by which barges are able to navigate the river. Construction of the Locks and Dam began in 1978 and was completed in 1994. The dam is 1,160 feet long, with 9 tainter gates, each 110 feet wide by 42 feet high. There are two lock chambers at Melvin Price. The main chamber is 1,200 feet long by 110 feet wide. The auxiliary chamber is 600 feet long by 110 feet wide. Read more about Melvin Price Lock and Dam at: http://www.mvs.usace.army.mil/navigation1/MelPrice.html
St. Louis Riverfront Tour on Wednesday Afternoon (4:30-7:00pm)--Open to all!
Contact: Bob Holmes (bholmes@usgs.gov)
This will occur at or around the St. Louis Gateway Arch (http://il.water.usgs.gov/adcp/index.html) on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River. The first topic will be the Great Flood of 1993. The flood was one of the most significant and damaging natural disasters ever to hit the United States. Damages totaled $15 billion, 50 people died, hundreds of levees failed, and thousands of people were evacuated, some for months. The flood was unusual in the magnitude of the crests, the number of record crests, the large area impacted, and the length of the time the flood was an issue. A retrospective talk on the record flood event, and what has happened since, will be presented. Posters about different issues pertaining to The Great Flood of 1993 will also be on display. Finally, several boats will be equipped and available and will take interested participants out on the river to demonstrate hydroacoustic instruments currently in use in the USGS (http://il.water.usgs.gov/adcp/index.html).
Taum Sauk Field Trip on Friday (6:00am-3:00pm)
Contact: Rick Huizinga (huizinga@usgs.gov)
- Bus will leave at 6:00am on April 6 and return at ~3:00pm (2.5 hour bus trip each way).
- There will be a $15 charge for a boxed lunch (including snacks and drinks).
(Boxed lunches will be supplied by City Grocers of St. Louis. They will include a sandwich (all on baguette w/ swiss, lettuce, tomatoes, onions and condiments in packs), chips, fruit cup, and cookie. Choices will be turkey, 'natural' roast beef, smoked ham, or fresh vegetable (no cheese).
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As part of the National Surface Water Conference and HydroAcoustics Workshop, a visit to Johnson Shut-ins State Park near Lesterville in southeastern Missouri is proposed. This is the site of the Taum Sauk Upper Reservoir Failure that occurred in December 2005. The Taum Sauk Pumped Storage Hydroelectric Facility (the Taum Sauk Plant) is owned and operated by Ameren-UE power company, and is located in the St. Francois Mountains, approximately eight miles north of Lesterville, Missouri. The plant consists of an upper reservoir on the top of Proffit Mountain, a shaft and tunnel inside the mountain, a power house containing two combination pump-turbine generators, and a lower reservoir on the East Fork of the Black River. Water is pumped from the lower reservoir to the upper reservoir during periods of low electricity demand, and is released from the upper reservoir to generate electricity during periods of peak demand. Johnson Shut-ins State Park is along the East Fork of the Black River between State Highway NN and the Lower Reservoir, at the base of Proffit Mountain. The Upper Reservoir catastrophically failed during the early morning hours of December 14, 2005. Approximately 1.4 billion gallons of water were released in approximately 30 minutes, carving a wide swath through the forest and overburden on the side of Proffit Mountain, and depositing large quantities of sediment and trees along the East Fork of the Black River before being mostly contained in the Lower Reservoir. The State Park and the unique geology of the Shut-ins were substantially altered by the deluge. |
Ameren-UE currently (October 2006) is removing sediment that has collected in the Lower Reservoir, and is debating whether to rebuild the Upper Reservoir. Meanwhile, the State Park is working to re-establish "natural" conditions in the Park, and to remove sediment and debris from the Shut-ins. A field trip to this site would provide a glimpse of the catastrophic failure and its effects, as well as the subsequent clean up efforts at the Park.
The Johnson Shut-ins park manager is willing to coordinate a tour of the park and present information on what occurred and what has been done to remediate the site. A tour of the Taum Sauk Plant (the overall operation of the plant and a visit to the site of the failure at the Upper Reservoir) may be included, contingent upon tour group size and construction plans of Ameren-UE.
Conveyance for this trip would be by bus from downtown St. Louis to the Johnson Shut-ins State Park. A presentation could be made during the trip by Paul Rydlund, the USGS MoWSC hydrologist who worked on a write-up of the failure and has estimated discharge based on high-water marks throughout the site, and other relevant persons.
Time involved would be approximately 8 hours: approximately 2.5 hours from St. Louis to site, 3 hours on site (less if unable to tour Plant), and 2.5 hours return trip.
