Helping to Inform at Bluestone Dam
For two years the Center for Educational Technologies has worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as part of the Corps' Dam Safety Assurance program. We have focused our efforts on the Bluestone Dam in Southern West Virginia. The dam forms an 11-mile lake behind it and also is part of a system to control flooding in the Kanawha River basin. In 2011 a team of educational experts at the Center for Educational Technologies developed and facilitated a one-day exercise bringing together Corps employees, state and local emergency responders, and others with a stake in reducing risk at the dam. In 2012 we completed the After Action Report, detailing what was learned by all parties about how people would respond should a major precipitation event cause risk at the dam.
Getting the Word Out
A second phase of our work with the Corps has been a series of public information materials to help the Corps communicate to residents in the region about the long-term construction project at the dam. The work has involved anchoring the dam to bring it up to today's engineering standards and reduce the risk of the dam's sliding from the bedrock it was built on should a major flood ever occur. Our team created posters describing the anchoring process, the overall construction project, and proposed blasting for excavation. The touchstone piece is a six-minute public service video that describes the work at Bluestone. The video was finalized in late 2012 and delivered to the Corps, which plans to use it on its website and also have it available for television viewing. The posters and video production took advantage of the Center for Educational Technologies' veteran communications professionals, who were able to design effective tools to help the Corps keep the public informed.