The Challenge

The Penn Forest Dam had endured a series of complications since its opening in 1960, including weep holes, seepage, and a fifteen-foot sink hole. To mitigate the dam's problems, the City of Bethlehem hired Conti and its team of subcontractors under a $24 million contract to remediate the dam's existing problems as well as to raise its walls by three feet to increase spillway capacity.

The Solution

The Conti Group helped the City of Bethlehem with its dam concerns by making huge structural reinforcements and improvements. The team constructed two concrete plants and a conveyor system on-site to produce roller compacted concrete, which was composed of a blend of both coarse and fine aggregate, cement, fly ash, and water. To save time and money, the plants were operated six days per week, two shifts per day. This method was extremely efficient, as it produced approximately 4,000 cy of roller compacted concrete (RCC) per day. The team also constructed the dam walls, then lined them with more than 2,000 six-foot-high, sixteen-foot-wide, four-inch-thick steel panels.

Upon completion, the Penn Forest project was the third largest RCC project in the US, consisting of 360,000 cy of RCC and spanning 2,000 feet long and 180 feet tall.

Scope of Work