NORTH ATLANTIC DIVISION New England District
USACE Team Fights Floods in New England
p New England before and after: Ball Mountain Dam before the flooding in this May 2023 photo. Ball Mountain
Lake has a permanent pool with a depth of 25 feet that covers 20 acres. From mid-May to mid-October, this pool is kept at a depth of 65 feet, enlarging the pool area to 75 acres, to increase the seasonal recreational opportunities. The lake can store up to 17.8 billion gallons of water for flood control purposes. Holding that much water would have the reservoir pool cover 810 acres and extend 6.5 miles upstream through Londonderry. During this storm, at their peaks, the seven USACE dams along the Connecticut River Basin in Vermont and New Hampshire were collectively storing and holding back 60 billion gallons of storm water, equivalent to 91,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. USACE PHOTOS BY JOHN ASSENG
52 I AMERICA’S ENGINEERS
Torrential downpours in mid-July inundated New England with massive amounts of rainfall. Vermont and New Hampshire received the largest impacts and the water levels rose behind all of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) dams in the Upper Connecticut River Basin. During this storm, at their peaks, the seven USACE dams in the Upper Connecticut River Basin in Vermont and New Hampshire collectively stored 60 billion gallons of storm water, which is equivalent to 91,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, to mitigate downstream flooding. All affected dams operated as designed.
