Progress Reported On Fogelsville Dam

A Keystone Consulting Engineers official told Upper Macungie Supervisors last week that he had a cooperative meeting with members of the Department of Environmental Protection on the future of the Fogelsville Dam.

The state has Fogelsville Dam on Haasadahl Road listed as a and wants it fixed or removed.

"We had a cooperative meeting with DEP," engineer Dean Haas told supervisors. "We submitted a grant to obtain some money to lower the dam by six feet."

Upper Macungie is considering the dam so it would no longer be considered a “high hazard” dam.

"It's positive news," Haas said. "A plan shows how we could use it and do it two or three years in a controlled manner. We can stabilize the silt as we go in there and as we remove the sections of the dam we can go back and look at other sections of it."

Breaching the dam – removing the barrier that holds the water back – could be especially costly because the dam helps hold up Haasadahl Road, so it can’t be removed without extensive work to the road.

Upper Macungie Supervisor Kathy Rader said recently said that to breach the dam and replace the road foundation could cost about $2 million. But a partial breaching of the dam might take it off the “high hazard” list while saving the township from the expense of full removal, Rader said.

Supervisors chairman Edward Earley said he told a DEP official that the dam has been there since 1941 and that Mother Nature has thrown everything she could at it and the dam withstood it.

"The answer I got was, 'but you never know about tomorrow,'" Earley said.