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Boulders make a move on water tank Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Huge boulders threaten Talent's new million-gallon reservoir, which is being constructed as part of the Talent-Ashland-Phoenix water intertie project. The boulders, which were exposed suddenly over Memorial Day weekend, are moving slowly toward the reservoir 40 feet below. Crews hope to remove the rocks by Friday. Talent works on ways to remove rock By MEG LANDERS There's an estimated 30- to 50-ton boulder sliding toward Talent's new million-gallon reservoir tank off Talent Avenue. "It looks precarious up there," said John Morrison, community development manager for Rogue Valley Council of Governments. "We're working very quickly to alleviate the threat to the tank." The boulder is one of several giant rocks which, until recently, were mostly buried. Over Memorial Day Weekend, however, dirt fell away and the boulders became exposed and began sliding downhill as workers constructed the new reservoir just 40 feet below. Morrison said when work began, there was no visible cause for concern over the rocks. "It looked like those rocks were an extension of bedrock and it sat there for three months," he says. Inspections by a company geologist show the rocks came loose because of water seeping underground from above the site, said Tom Pierce, project foreman with James W. Fowler Co., the Dallas contractor in charge of the project. The foreman said regular measuring has determined that the most threatening boulder has moved about two inches over this past weekend. To alleviate the problem, construction crews have formed a plan A and a plan B. Plan A, already begun, includes backfilling the reservoir to decrease the slope in front of the boulders and breaking up and removing the rocks. Rock-breaking equipment is due to arrive today. The best-case scenario, said Pierce, is that the rock will be broken up and removed by Friday, and the entire process will cost a couple thousand dollars. If that doesn't work, he said, crews will shift to Plan B, which includes more complex processes such as drilling holes in the massive rocks and filling them with an expanding chemical epoxy that will cause the rocks to break up. "The main thing we're worried about is if one of them tipped and rolled down, it would bust the (reservoir's) concrete," said Pierce. Once the rocks are removed, the slope should be stable, Pierce added. The reservoir project is scheduled to be completed in September. Crews will begin filling it with water once the Talent-Ashland-Phoenix water intertie is complete in January or February. Kelly Madding, Talent's city administrator, said it's better to have problems now than when there's a million gallons of water in the tank. "If this had to happen, this is probably not the worst time," she said. Madding said the financial arrangement has yet to be worked out. "To the best of my knowledge, we haven't received a cost estimate," she said, acknowledging that the financial responsibility may fall to the city of Talent. "The reservoir's ours," she said. At this point, Morrison doesn't think the cost will be an issue. "There are contingency funds that should cover it," he said. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.