The Kingsley Brook Dam is owned by the State of New York under the jurisdiction of the NYSCC. The dam is located in Madison County, approximately 3 miles northeast of the town center of Lebanon and about 3.5 miles southwest of the Village of Hamilton. It is oriented in a north-south direction at the east end of Lebanon Reservoir. Reservoir Road (County Route 66) extends along the crest of the dam. The crest is approximately 900 feet long, 25 feet wide, and 63 feet higher than the downstream area at Elevation 1319. The dam has a concrete spillway located near its center. Reservoir Road is supported by a reinforced concrete bridge over the spillway.

The Kingsley Brook Reservoir Dam was reconstructed in 1867 to provide water for the barge canal system. In 1994, the concrete spillway located near the center of the dam was constructed along with a new prestressed concrete hollow slab bridge to carry Reservoir road over the spillway.

Bergmann Associates and McMahon & Mann teamed to complete a dam safety inspection and engineering assessment for the dam in 2014, as required by NYCRR Part 673.16. We completed subsurface explorations and laboratory and field tests to measure the properties of the foundation soil and the groundwater levels in the embankment. The subsurface work included installing standpipe piezometers in the embankment soils to allow measurements of the groundwater level in the dam fill at various times of the year. The information obtained from the geotechnical investigation provided the data used to evaluate the seepage conditions and complete the stability analyses of the embankment.

McMahon & Mann and Bergmann prepared an Engineering Assessment Report that included the results of the safety inspection, the hydrologic and hydraulic analyses, the stability and seepage analyses and identified deficiencies in the dam. The report presented conceptual recommendations for remediation to bring the dam into compliance with current NYSDEC Guidelines.