1. Hannah Cissell
4/13/14
JMC 201
News Brief
The city of Tempe will be having an open house on Apr. 23 at Tempe Center for the
Arts from 6-7:30 p.m., to introduce the new dam for Tempe Town Lake, however
they do not expect a big turn out for the event.
Kris Baxter-Ging, the public information officer of the city of Tempe said that they
have been doing a lot of communication ahead of time about the lake, which is why
they are expecting around 20 people to attend.
The open house is going to give people an idea of the construction timeline and will
give the Tempe residents a chance to meet the construction manager and workers
who will be working on the lake.
“If we didn’t do a good job communicating beforehand, we would have 100 people
out there,” Baxter-Ging said.
The reason for the open house and the building of a new dam is due to a portion of
the previous dam collapsing on July 19, 2010.
According to the Republic, a report was released by an independent consulting
agency saying that heat and age were the main causes of the collapse.
The report concluded that layers of the rubber dam began to separate because of an
opening in a part of the dam near the concrete apron. The opening became worse
over time due to “extremely high” temperatures that reached over 100 degrees.
Baxter-Ging said that oddly enough they had been planning to start construction on
the new dam the morning after the burst initially happened.

2. According to Baxter-Ging, PCL Construction will be the company heading the new
dam project and that they have done a number of projects with the Town Lake
already.
She said that they are extremely confident with PCL Construction. “They’ve done a
great job on every project they’ve helped us on,” Baxter-Ging said.
The Bridgestone Company who had built the previous dam that collapsed replaced
all the bladders with no cost to the city of Tempe. However, they gave the city until
Dec. 28, 2015 to replace the dam.
According to Baxter-Ging every month that they are late on replacing the dam after
Dec. 28, they are required to pay $30,000 as part of their negotiation with
Bridgestone.
The installation of the new dam will cost around $40.8 million according to Baxter-
Ging and will be paid for using money from the budget as well as voter approved
bonds.
According to AZ Family, this is the city’s most significant project since the creation
of the lake itself in 1999.
Baxter-Ging said that Tempe is in the process of putting together a maintenance
plan at the moment but that the new dam will have an automated maintenance
system to warn when something is not as good as it should be.
The new dam will consist of eight gates that will raise and lower with hydraulics so
that if one gate were to mess up the remaining seven will be able to withstand it and
hold.

3. Baxter-Ging said that they want to make sure the lake is secure for residents and
visitors. “The number one reason for this new dam is for safety,” she said.