Damb Breach Imminent:

Why not pile debris into the water.

Some big rock bags and fine materials.

Keep filling until there is new shoreline all the way across and down.

Strangely enough the company I served my apprenticeship with is donating the infill material.

Who’s paying for the Chinook helicopter…………?

Taxpayers pay for the RAF to use their big boys toys. Good training for 'em :)
Del

Why didn’t they use quickset shotcrete supplied from a concrete pump ?

they could park a concrete pump 50 metres away , I have seen ones here with 60 - 80 metre reach , and shoot it from the concrete pump straight in to fill the void , it would be setting within hours.

choose between 20 / 50 mm basalt fibre or steel fibre for reinforcing and it would tie in nicely under the existing slab.

Shotcrete would be my first choice but if the water is seeping through the clay wall it won’t adhere.

A dry mix concrete with a dense aggregate (basalt/granite) may stand a chance if it’s compacted well. The area is primarily limestone and gritstone, there’s only one basalt outcrop I know of and that’s near worked out.

If there was seepage coming through the easy fix is a 3 mm rubber sheet as used for dam liners unroll it down the back of the dam wall in the widest sheet you can find with a weight at the bottom , that stops the seepage temporarily so you can shotcrete to fill that hole.

when the water level has been drained lower you would point a couple of engineers at the thing to assess structural integrity , maybe drill holes across the entire back wall at 2 metre x 2 metre intervals and inject high pressure 2 pack poly grout or similar to stabilise the dam substrate , then drill the concrete slab covering the rear wall , fit rebar into the holes and pour a new covering concrete slab over the whole wall with load cells and movement sensors placed through the structure linked to a monitored alarm station.

or you could stand there with your hands in your pocket and look at it talking in a pirate voice aaaargh .

but I prefer the shotcrete

Too late to sell??

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/Whaley-Bridge.html

In spite of the stressful situation, this is IMO a best case scenario, where there was a partial failure that allowed time for evacuation and emergency response to the problem. Just imagine if it had failed completely the first time.

Congratulate your son on his good fortune!

It's stopped raining so they stand a chance of dropping the water level.

Saves me having buy the lad a rowing boat

https://www.buxtonadvertiser.co.uk/news/toddbrook-reservoir-latest-pictures-show-efforts-to-drain-water-from-whaley-bridge-dam-1-9915435

The lad’s house is now in a designated safe area.

The pub my wife and I met at every week while we were courting forty five years back is still in a danger zone. Like our marriage, it could end as a total wash out. That being said, twenty three years on and we’re still the best of friends.

Governments tend to be very bad at prevention, very slow at correction, and very quick at finger-pointing afterwards at anybody other than themselves...

Was it the Government that (made) the safety map?...

Relocate now, while you still can...

Since there does not appear to be any on-going effort to lower the upstream water level by pumping or diversion, consider putting all their household valuables in safe storage location(s) elsewhere, until the house can be sold, or moved, or abandoned...

I think they are diverting upstream water... they may be daft, but they are not stupid
Del

What puzzles me about this is there seems to be no drainage pipe for the reservoir. Or in the absence of a dedicated drain, dump water via the water treatment plant supply pipework. The level could then be dropped quicker than by pumping, with no logistics or expense. Of course the flowrate would be limited to avoid flooding downstream, but the same goes for the pumping rate.

Practically all reservoirs are formed by damming a river, and incorporate an overflow into the river downstream. A drain pipe could discharge there, which I assume is where the pumps deliver to.

Any ideas? Perhaps the Victorians weren't as far-sighted as we give them credit for.