There have been several press articles written with verbiage in them indicating that the management of the dam had nothing to do with the flooding that occurred. At Mondays 5/7/07 Hamilton Twp Committee Meeting there were several handouts dealing with the Lake Lenape Dam and the April flood. One of those was the "Lenape Dam Log sheet" with logs from 8/06 - 4/07. Each day, except on weekends, holidays, and days off the operator of the dam checks the depth of the water at the spillway which should be maintained at 4" and opens or closes the 3 gates accordingly. The information then gets recorded in the log. Glancing over the March and April data at the meeting, it seemed quite apparent that the depth at the spillway was not being managed well at all. The gates of the dam had been closed for a 1 1/2 months allowing the water level at the spillway to get dangerously high, on March 20th it was at 13" and there was no action taken. This neglect and the fact that I have yet to read anything in the press suggesting that Township is responsible for this horrible event prompted me to do a little research of my own. I took 9 months of data from the Lenape Dam Log sheet as well as historical precipitation data from the National Weather Service and plugged it into a spreadsheet. While it is tricky to process 9 months of raw numbers in your head, plotting those numbers detailed a very disturbing trend that ultimately led to Aprils Flood. Click on the graph above to view in in full size, try printing it in landscape mode if you want a hard copy. I do apologize for it being a bit busy, however please take the time to understand it and come to your own conclusion. Take note of Oct. - Nov. where there was significantly more rain than what caused the April flood, all three gates were opened and the level at the spillway went down. Also take note how the spillway level bounces all over the place showing no consistency what so ever. Mark
