WARRENVILLE — During the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the dam at Langley Pond on Friday, local officials celebrated the completion of a project “that has been a long time in coming,” said Aiken County Council Chairman Gary Bunker.
Among those joining him at the event were S.C. Sen. Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, S.C. Rep. Melissa Oremus, R-Aiken and S.C. Rep. Bill Taylor, R-Aiken.
Others in attendance included County Council Vice Chairman Andrew Siders, and County Councilmen Danny Feagin and Sandy Haskell.
“It’s hard to imagine it’s been six years going back to 2014,” Bunker said.
In November of that year, a man who was walking a dog “saw the problems at the far end of the dam,” Bunker continued. “And then County Council and the (county’s) engineering department got to work trying to figure out how to design a new dam and how to finance a new dam.”
The groundbreaking ceremony for the project to repair, renovate and retrofit the leaking structure was held in March 2018.
After delays caused by wet weather and other factors, nearly all the work was completed in April of this year, and the rest was wrapped up by May 21.
The dam has a new labyrinthine spillway, which is a replacement for the structure’s old ogee crest spillway.
“It’s become a little bit of a cliche to talk about team effort, but oh my gosh, this really was a significant team effort,” Bunker said. “Not only County Council, but also our chief engineer at the time, Joe Berry, was instrumental in making this happen. Then Teresa Crain, our current county engineer, saw it to completion.”
Bunker also mentioned the contributions of Schnabel Engineering and Crowder Construction Co.
Schnabel was the project’s designer and supervisor. Crowder Construction was the contractor.
“We hauled in about 60,000 cubic yards of Earth,” said Joe Monroe of Schnabel Engineering. “We have 15,000 tons of riprap to armor the outlet channel. There is a new seepage control wall down the center which is about 100,000 square feet. That’s a 30-inch-wide wall of concrete. The new spillway totals almost 6,000 cubic yards of concrete and steel.”
A $6 million Hazard Mitigation Grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a $9 million general obligation bond and Capital Project Sales Tax proceeds provided funding for the project.
Aiken County Administrator Clay Killian told the Aiken Standard in late April that the cost for construction, change orders, engineering and utility relocation for the project was $14,451,412 so far.
The final cost is still in the process of being determined, said Bunker on Friday.
“Our funding was for $17 million, and I know it is going to come in under that,” he added.
Langley Pond's dam originally was built in the 1850s and was primarily an earthen structure back then.
Berry, who retired in 2018, told the Aiken Standard that an ogee crest spillway was added to the dam in the 1950s.
Even though the latest work on the dam is finished, Langley Pond won’t be open for swimming this summer, and there also won’t be any rowing competitions in the near future.
Planned next are a series of upgrades for the facilities at Langley Pond Park, where the dam is located.
They will include a new inclusive playground and landscaping. The existing gravel parking lot also will be paved.
Around $1.7 million is available for the funding of those improvements.
A new dock and boat ramp already have been constructed.
In March, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held for a new finish line tower for rowing events. Its cost was more than $1.2 million.
