07-15-2015, 07:13 AM
(07-14-2015, 11:56 PM)BrianT Wrote: They are getting the crossing built, so pumping the water during good weather must be somewhat useful. I don't know if there is any other relatively inexpensive and practical way to dry the site, while they complete the work.
Yes, during normal flow the pumping system works fine. It’s just severely overwhelmed by heavy rainfall. Of course, it would be possible to design a pumping system for any flow level, but it would have to be significantly higher capacity than the one they are actually using. But as we’ve already observed, they can dry it back out again and keep working so I suspect they’ve made a decision to use only enough pumping capacity for normal flow. Like most engineering decisions, there are tradeoffs: pay extra when it rains to re-drain the river, or pay extra up front for more capacity.