Barring major changes to the Bradford City Water Authority’s
plan for the rehabilitation of Marilla Dam, construction on the
project should start this spring.

Water authority executive director Kim Benjamin said at the
authority’s regular meeting Tuesday that he met with
representatives of the federal Bureau of Dams last week. Officials
in Harrisburg are reviewing the authority’s plan for rehabilitating
the reservoir and dam, he said.

The rehabilitation project is said to cost about $2 million.

Benjamin said that since his meeting with the federal agency, he
received an e-mail asking about the possibility of another
face-to-face meeting to make some alterations – what he called
“minor structural changes” -ðto the Marilla plan. Benjamin said he
was not sure if he would have to meet in person to make the
changes, he said he hoped this would be “the last step to get it
(the Marilla rehabilitation plan) out of Harrisburg.”

Regardless of these changes that may have to be made at the
planning phase, Benjamin said, engineers with Bankson and R&D
Engineers both agreed work on the dam would proceed on
schedule.

The reservoir has been slowly draining to allow the work to be
done, Benjamin added. Ideally, the dam will be completely
drained.

Authority chairman C. Lawrence Shields asked Benjamin what would
become of the wildlife once the water was gone.

Benjamin said that while he was sure the dam could never
actually be completely emptied -ðonly drawn way down for the work
to be done; Marilla has not been drained during the tenure of any
of the current water authority officials or employees, so he was
not certain what would happen or how it would affect the
wildlife.

Also, significant weather events have a tendency to fill the dam
back up as it is relatively small at 120,000 gallons, he said.

In 2004, the Marilla Reservoir was deemed unsafe by the state
Department of Environmental Protection due to “concerns over the
stability of the downstream slope and capacity of the spillway,”
Benjamin said in the fall of that year. The water level at Marilla
was reduced immediately

Of the three reservoirs in the watershed -ðHeffner, Gilbert and
Marilla – Marilla is the oldest and the last to incorporate new
drains that will correct these stability issues.