Benefit Analysis of Ice Control Structures in Oil City, Pennsylvania
Publication: Journal of Cold Regions Engineering
Volume 31, Issue 2
Abstract
In designing flood control projects, engineers must show that the proposed project provides a flood damage reduction benefit in economic terms. For ice control structures, however, cost benefits have rarely been calculated at the time of construction because of the uncertainty associated with ice-affected flooding. This work presents a quantitative method for assessing the financial benefits of such structures since installation. Oil City, located at the confluence of the Allegheny River and Oil Creek in Pennsylvania, experienced frequent ice jam and ice jam flooding events prior to the design and installation of two ice control structures (ICS) in the 1980s. The ice control structure on the Allegheny River is a floating boom meant to encourage freezeup and development of a thermal ice cover, reducing frazil deposition in a pool downstream of the confluence. The Oil Creek ICS is a concrete weir designed to hold back or delay ice runs down to the confluence where they traditionally jam. Using historical ice jam data, criteria were developed to estimate when a jam was likely to occur. Those criteria were applied to the post-ICS period, and dates when an ice jam was likely were modeled without and with an ICS in place. A hydraulic model was calibrated and used to model post-ICS jams for without-ICS and with-ICS conditions. Financial damages in each case were estimated from the modeled peak stage resulting from an ice jam event. Benefits were then calculated by comparing financial damages resulting from the peak stage with the structure in place to that without the structure for the same event. The objective of this study is to implement that method for calculating annual benefits and to estimate the without-ICS and with-ICS stage at Oil City for each year that the ICSs have been in place. This example application of estimating cost benefits of a structure after installation for examining impacts presents a method for justifying maintenance and rehabilitation costs of ice control structures and future design and construction. It is estimated that the Oil City ICSs have provided $23.5 million in flood damage reduction since installation.
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Acknowledgments
The writers acknowledge the Pittsburgh District of USACE who funded this study, particularly Mark Zaitsoff and Joseph Bossard. We also thank Steven Daly, John Gagnon, and Gordon Gooch of CRREL for their assistance.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Cold Regions Engineering
Volume 31 • Issue 2 • June 2017
Copyright
©2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 13, 2014
Accepted: Oct 12, 2016
Published online: Nov 29, 2016
Discussion open until: Apr 29, 2017
Published in print: Jun 1, 2017
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