Like any piece of amazing infrastructure, the foundation is critical to the integrity of the entire build. When it comes to the creation of the New Waddell Dam, John Knudson dove into the dam’s underpinnings from the beginning.

Knudson, now the City of Chandler’s Public Works and Utilities Director/City Engineer, provided vital engineering support for drilling, grouting and geotechnical instrumentation related to the dam foundation as a contractor with Ebasco Constructors, Inc. during the late-1980s and early-1990s.

Upon its completion, New Waddell Dam, at about 5,000 feet long, greatly expanded the storage capacity of Lake Pleasant to what is approximately 800,000 acre-feet so it could be utilized as Central Arizona Project’s storage reservoir.

History of New Waddel Dam

Construction of the $625 million New Waddell Dam began in 1985 and was completed in 1992.

The original Waddell Dam, which was completed in 1927 and at the time was the world’s largest concrete, multiple arch dam, was not destroyed. Instead, it was intentionally breeched and remains underwater, located approximately a half-mile upstream of the new dam.

The dam stores Colorado River water and runoff from the Agua Fria River and provides hydroelectric generation, flood protection and increased recreational opportunities at Lake Pleasant.

The dam’s impact on CAP

Without New Waddell Dam and Lake Pleasant, CAP would be restricted to importing Colorado River water into the state only when there was demand for water, severely limiting CAP’s ability to manage its energy resources and drastically increasing the cost of CAP water.

The lake is located around the midpoint of CAP’s 336-mile system, which supplies Colorado River to central and southern Arizona, and delivers more tribal water than any other organization in the United States.

It’s thanks to engineers such as Knudson, working on the very foundation, that has made this dam and storage reservoir an important component of the CAP system – itself foundational to Arizona.