After 60 years of operation ‘La Compagnie Nationale du Rhône’ started major maintenance to Dam Seyssel. The dam must be strengthened to increase the stability and to ensure the safety of the environment. Baars contributed an important part to this major civil engineering operation.
In October 2014 started the project by creating a recovery area with scaffolding and a channel between the quay wall and the dam. From the beginning the environment has had major attention. Several measures has been made to cause as little damage as possible to the water fauna. The oxygen content, temperature and turbidity of the Rhône water were continuously measured.
As part of the project, a carpet of 26,000 tons of rocks were placed at the bottom of the river. Each rock weighs 3 to 6 tons – and together they cover the bottom over an area of up to 5,000 m2. That’s almost two-thirds of a football pitch! The rocks came from quarries in the Rhône-Alpes and were supplied by trucks. They were then loaded from the quay wall at the splitbarges ‘Arthur’ and ‘Margaux’ delivered by Baars. These split barges had been plying the rocks downstream to the also by Baars supplied pontoon ‘Seyssel’. This pontoon provided a mechanical shovel which gave the stones back to the river …
A rock of a job!
