Infrastructure: Engineers Rebuild Behemoth In Face Of Earthquake Risks

ALAMEDA COUNTY, Calif. — If you think the era of big dam building is over in America, check out the Calaveras project.

Since 2001, construction crews have been excavating a gap in a ridge as tall as a city skyline near San Jose. They've sliced off part of a hillside and laid a concrete spillway longer than four football fields with 50,000 cubic yards of cement — enough to pave a sidewalk between Washington, D.C., and New York.

A custom conveyor belt this spring will carry 3.5 million cubic yards of earth — the same amount used in Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza — to build a 220-foot dam.

Calaveras is the country's largest new dam project. And it's only 1,200 feet downstream from another dam."

Jeremy P. Jacobs reports for Greenwire April 24, 2017.