Standing in front of a group of engineers, emergency response coordinators and environmental experts, all shivering in the cold while overlooking the Allegheny River, retired Oil City fire chief Steve Hinds pointed to a string of pontoons out in the water and said, “That’s a pretty unique thing we have right here.”
His remarks on Wednesday morning were focused on the ice device, also commonly known as the ice boom, strung across the river just up from Veterans Bridge. The gathering was composed of representatives from various agencies who later in the day held a seminar about ice jams on waterways.
The session was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Silver Jackets team, an interagency group that addresses ways to ease flooding risks. Key to the meeting in Oil City was flooding caused by ice jams.
“This was the first one in the United States,” said Hinds. “And now, there are a few (ice booms) in the Niagara River and one in Michigan. I think that’s all.”
In revisiting Oil City’s ice-related flooding incidents, Hinds said back-to-back floods in 1981 and 1982 resulted in nearly $10 million in damages to the city’s North Side business district. The culprit was an ice jam at the confluence of Oil Creek and the Allegheny River.
“Our river doesn’t flood – it’s our ice jam and the creek,” said Hinds. “We didn’t flood because of raging water but because of backwater, an over-my-head kind of water, from the jam.”
In seeking professional help to alleviate the flooding, the city got in touch with various experts and settled in with the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), part of the Army Corps of Engineers. Within a year, CREEL had created a possible solution with the design of a cable-pontoon system on the river. On tap was a $1.3 million design.
“Originally, everyone was negative about it and insisted it wouldn’t work,” said Hinds. ” … But, we’ve been flood-free since ’82 and I believe it works. It has shown that it works.”
The cable-pontoon system “does not hold back” the river ice but instead creates a layer in which frazzle, or slush, ice forms, he explained. That allows flowing river water to dissipate rather than freeze solid and results in an open patch of water just below the stretch of pontoons. Open water permits ice sloughing out of Oil Creek to move into the river without significant jamming.
The retired chief described the in-river system as to its design and function, and also mentioned the concrete dam-and-bollard design in midstream on Oil Creek. Both waterway obstructions have substantially mitigated jam-related floods over the years, he said.
“Even in 2015, when we had significant ice on the river, we didn’t have flooding,” said Hinds.
The Allegheny River device, maintained by the city, is periodically repaired and certain parts replaced. Hinds said the expense over the past five years has amounted to about $900,000, a sum paid in part through grants, for maintenance and upgrades.
“A lot of people didn’t think this would work, that we could stop that ice flooding,” Hinds told the group. “But, it has proven itself.”
