Living around it every day, it’s easy to take the Kinzua Dam for granted, as well as the people tasked with maintaining the river and preventing flooding from here to Pittsburgh.

But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the Kinzua Dam continue to ensure the river stays within its banks and keep a constant eye on the Dam itself.

The Corps provided a training for local officials on Wednesday morning at the Big Bend recreation area visitor center.

Natural Resource Manager Doug Helman said the Corps puts on the annual training because it “gives everyone an idea of the safety steps the Corps takes.”

“So far, within 50 years we haven’t had any issues,” he said. “We plan to keep it that way.”

He explained that if something were to happen to the Dam, the Corps has a flood emergency plan in place that details the steps they are to take, the contacts they are to make.

They have also run the calculations to be able to determine what the flooding might look like in a couple different instances.

A spillway flood, Helman explained, would occur “if there is an issue with the dam and (we) have time to draw the dam down.” In that instance, they will open all the gates and let the water go.

The other type is a “dam failure” where “we have no control over it now,” Helman said

In the event of a spillway flood, the time that the first water would be in Warren would be 15 minutes and 30 minutes for a failure, according to a chart prepared for the meeting. In Pittsburgh, those times would be 32 hours and 15 hours, respectively.

And in the event of a failure, the peak of the flooding would occur in 42 hours with a spillway flood and three hours of a dam failure.

That gives the Corps some time “to let everyone know what is happening,” Helman said.

The Corps has also developed “flood inundation maps” that delineate where the flooding would occur in the event of a dam failure. Warren County Public Safety Director Todd Lake pointed out that this is the worst-case scenario and assumed that the dam is at total capacity before the failure.

While the Corps has prepared for the worst-case scenario, Helman said they are unlikely to happen.

“We spend a lot of time out on the Dam looking, observing to see what’s going on,” he noted, indicating that the dam’s yearly inspection was just recently completed and that a major inspection is done every five years, in addition to other inspections.

“We’re looking at the Dam all the time,” he said. “We’re all trained on what to look for, the items that need to be seen” that would breed concern.

Ben Sakmar, also with the Corps, explained that the concrete structure of the Dam doubles as an emergency spillway.

He also talked about various maintenance that the Dam has needed since its installation in the 1960s, indicating that pieces of concrete have been found missing on the downstream side of the dam due to erosion but have been repaired as they are found.

The stilling basin at the base of the dam had similar concrete erosion in the 1970s and 1980s, he explained, that required repair.

However, since the repairs have been made, he said, dive team inspections have found that the repairs remain effective and that there are currently “no areas of significant concern.”

He also shared something quite interesting the Dam has moved downstream since its construction.

“All structures do move, including Kinzua Dam,” Sakmar explained. “But we monitor this movement to ensure that it does not get out of hand and that it stays within safe tolerances.

For example, he said the earthen portion has moved “nothing more than” half a foot in 60 years, a distance one would “be lucky to see with the naked eye.”

However, the movement is not indicative of any problem.

“There’s no movement trends, and this is something you would want to see,” he said.