Development of BC Hydro’s 2021 Safety/Debris Boom Design Guidelines

September 26, 2024

Public safety is at the forefront of the professional engineering practice. There is a general understanding within the industry that members of the public may not fully understand the risks to themselves while recreating near a spillway or dam structure. To reduce recreational patrons from endangering themselves and to provide potential self-rescue opportunities, installations of permanent public safety and debris booms have been occurring across the globe. Booms can be used for many purposes from containing and directing debris, to facilitating a competent ice cover upstream of a hydroelectric station or protecting the public from dangerous waterway zones immediately upstream or downstream of a structure.

In 1994, BC Hydro prepared the “Guidelines for Design of Debris Booms” which served as the basic design guideline for booms for BC Hydro. The guidelines prepared by Hatch and KCB in 2021 can be considered a replacement for the 1994 guidelines. The 2021 guidelines establish reasonable design criteria and procedures while allowing new methods of calculating design loads and new technology to be adopted as they become available in the future. The scope of the guidelines is limited to reservoir booms (i.e.: booms upstream of dams and generating facilities). The 2021 guidelines conform to modern industrial practices for reservoir boom design, including the 2011 Canadian Dam Association Guidelines on Public Safety. The intended audience for the guideline is designers tasked with developing new or replacement booms for BC Hydro reservoirs.

Toews, B., D. Bonin, A. Muir, T. Wilson, A. LeCouteur and S. Chakrabarti. 2024. “Development of BC Hydro’s 2021 Safety/Debris Boom Design Guidelines,” in Proceedings of the CDA Annual Conference, 22-25 September 2024. Niagara Falls, ON: Canadian Dam Association.