Divers installing new control gates 150 ft below the surface of Cheesman Dam continue to blast, chop and saw-cut through granite to bring water-control systems on the 105-year-old dam up to modern standards.
The dam, in the foothills 25 miles southwest of Denver, stores 80,000 acre ft of water to help meet the needs of Denver Water’s 1.3 million customers. When it was built in 1905, the 221-ft-tall brick-and-granite dam was the tallest in the world, but its cast-iron valves are rusty and unworkable, giving engineers no reliable upstream controls to shut the water off if something happens at the dam.