UNDATED REPORT BY PROF AK HUGHES, Director of Dams & Water Resources, Atkins Ltd, MRS ANNE EVANS, Severn Trent Water MR ROB GALLOWAY, Severn Trent Water
Dam - Earth embankment with clay apron on Upstream face, 13.7m high, 630m long Reservoir capacity 244,100 cubic metres. Stanley Moor Reservoir was a small, rectangular, impounding structure, formed on three sides by earth embankments and founded partly on limestone and partly on millstone grits. The whole of the inside was lined with puddle clay with a protective layer of masonry pitching. The reservoir had not been used as a water supply source for over twenty years. The principal feeds were two nearby streams, to the west and to the north; the flow being intercepted and directed through aqueducts to the intake chute, by the operation of “leaping weir” sluices. On first filling, appreciable leakage occurred due to defects in the clay blanket. Strenuous but unsuccessful attempts were made to overcome the inherent problem caused by the underlying material being honeycombed by solution holes and caverns. Eminent dam engineers of the period, including Sir Alexander Binnie & William Binnie, were all involved by giving their advice or by making statements, as expert witnesses, in the action taken by Buxton Council against the Engineers. A statement from one of the experts that “I have never seen better work than that showed in the Stanley Moor Reservoir; and I have never seen a site so plainly and almost hopelessly bad” seems to summarise all the opinions voiced at the time. Finally, the working top water level was reduced by 10 feet and, in 1946, the original overflow weir and spillway was superseded by the construction of a low level weir channel and 36 inch overflow culvert, passing through the embankment. The capacity was thus reduced from 450,000m³ to 275,000m³.
UNDATED REPORT BY PROF AK HUGHES, Director of Dams & Water Resources, Atkins Ltd,
MRS ANNE EVANS, Severn Trent Water
MR ROB GALLOWAY, Severn Trent Water
Dam - Earth embankment with clay apron on Upstream face, 13.7m high, 630m long Reservoir capacity 244,100 cubic metres. Stanley Moor Reservoir was a small, rectangular, impounding structure, formed on three sides by earth embankments and founded partly on limestone and partly on millstone grits. The whole of the inside was lined with puddle clay with a protective layer of masonry pitching. The reservoir had not been used as a water supply source for over twenty years. The principal feeds were two nearby streams, to the west and to the north; the flow being intercepted and directed through aqueducts to the intake chute, by the operation of “leaping weir” sluices. On first filling, appreciable leakage occurred due to defects in the clay blanket. Strenuous but unsuccessful attempts were made to overcome the inherent problem caused by the underlying material being honeycombed by solution holes and caverns. Eminent dam engineers of the period, including Sir Alexander Binnie & William Binnie, were all involved by giving their advice or by making statements, as expert witnesses, in the action taken by Buxton Council against the Engineers. A statement from one of the experts that “I have never seen better work than that showed in the Stanley Moor Reservoir; and I have never seen a site so plainly and almost hopelessly bad” seems to summarise all the opinions voiced at the time. Finally, the working top water level was reduced by 10 feet and, in 1946,
the original overflow weir and spillway was superseded by the construction of a low level weir channel and 36 inch overflow culvert, passing through the embankment. The capacity was thus reduced from 450,000m³ to 275,000m³.