The man who did the original design for Zink Dam has a message for the river infrastructure task force.
"Constructing a dam is one thing, but maintaining a dam is absolutely another thing," said hydrologist W.B. Smith. "And it's not just the physical structure."
Smith said the Arkansas River throws trash, debris and corrosion-causing chlorides at Zink on a daily basis. He said local leaders need a plan to maintain proposed low-water dams from Sand Springs to Bixby even when funding is down.
Putting water in the river is local leaders’ goal, but it probably won’t do much more than flow downstream.
Smith has spoken with hydropower industry leaders worldwide and said the proposed dams aren’t good sites to generate electricity.
"Conventional technology on sites where your available power head is 10–12 feet or less, it is not economical," Smith said. "It physically won't work, but it's not economical, either."
Keystone Dam is more than 120 feet tall. Zink Dam is 9 feet tall, and the proposed dams wouldn’t be much taller than that.
There is technology to harness the river’s current for generating electricity, but it’s untested and presents several maintenance issues.
