Klohn Crippen Berger Receives Two Awards of Excellence from Canadian Consulting Engineers

October 24, 2007

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA - The Canadian Consulting Engineer Magazine and Association of Consulting Engineers of Canada (ACEC) presented Klohn Crippen Berger with two Awards of Excellence in Ottawa on October 23rd.

The awards were for the South Tailings Pond Wetlands, Millennium Mine, Alberta, and the Seymour Falls Dam Seismic Upgrade, North Vancouver, B.C.

As part of their overall design of the massive South Tailings Pond for Suncor, Klohn Crippen Berger designed the 5 km diversion of McLean Creek as a linear wetland that mimics the meandering channel and permanently inundated wetlands lost beneath the 20 km2 footprint of the new tailings impoundment. Levees and cross-dykes utilize the natural topography to establish the new flow route and wetland areas, maintain natural watershed boundaries and reduce the effect of the tailings pond on local creeks. The constructed elements will require minimal maintenance compared to a conventional ditch and pond system and will mature into natural and passive features of the permanent landscape.

The second award was for the seismic upgrade of the Seymour Falls Dam for owner Greater Vancouver Regional District. The seismic upgrade was constructed without interrupting water supply to Greater Vancouver and the operation of the downstream fish hatchery. This unique seismic upgrade design involved construction of a new, stand-alone earth fill dam over a bouldery, debris flow foundation just downstream of the existing dam. The new foundation was densified using an innovative combination of explosive and dynamic compaction. New drilling techniques had to be developed to not only assess the density of this heterogeneous foundation but to place and set off 30,000 kg of charges.