EAST TENNESSEE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

October 2023 Meeting

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Monday, October 9, 2023
6:00 - 7:30 pm

Note: ETGS members participating virtually will receive an email with info for attending/logging into the meeting.
 

October Presentation

Geologic Conditions at the Proposed Miner Flat Dam Site in Arizona and their Impact on Foundation Design
 

By

Patrick White, PE


Abstract

The Miner Flat Dam is a proposed dam on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Navajo County, Arizona to be constructed for the purpose of developing a reservoir to supply water to the White Mountain Apache Tribe in accordance with the requirements of the Water Rights Quantification Act of 2010. The dam will span the North Fork of the White River and is located approximately 10 miles south of Pinetop, Arizona. The dam will be constructed of roller-compacted concrete (RCC) with a structural height of about 160 feet, and the reservoir behind the dam will store up to about 8,620 acre-ft of water.

Foundation conditions present a difficult challenge to constructing the dam and providing an adequate foundation in terms of seepage control. The dam is to be located on varying materials which include highly fractured and jointed basalts, alluvial soils buried beneath the basalt flows, non-cemented sandstones, karstic limestones and siltstones, and massive gypsum beds. This presentation will discuss the geologic conditions, and various methods proposed to provide seepage control.
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Biography
 

Patrick is a geotechnical engineer with HDR in Olympia, Washington. He is a Tennessee native and completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering from the University of Tennessee. His 15 years of experience have focused on dams and their foundations and he currently chairs the foundation committee of the United States Society on Dams.

 

Greetings! We hope you will join us for the next ETGS in-person/virtual meeting, and that you, your family, and your colleagues are staying healthy and well. 

As a courtesy, please mute your cell phone or the microphone in your laptop/tablet to minimize background noise and feedback echoes. We will try to mute all participants until the presentation is finished. Please use the chat feature to type comments or questions during the presentation. We recommend that you send questions for the speaker to "everyone" so all participants can see the question. After the presentation, the speaker will answer questions.  During this Q&A period, you may unmute if you wish to ask a question verbally.

We will create an attendance list based on the participant names we can see during the meeting. This is helpful for those who need to document participation to support Professional Geologist registrations. It is not always possible to tell who is participating, especially for those joining by phone, so please email your name to etgs@live.com to be listed on the attendance sheet. Let us know exactly how your name should appear on the list.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we continue adapting to this hybrid format. As always, we welcome and appreciate your feedback and suggestions for improvement.

 

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President
David Carlone

Vice President
Open

Secretary
J. Brad Stephenson

Treasurer
Seaira Stephenson

Webmaster/Social Media Coordinator
Bob Gelinas

 

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Page updated September 29, 2023