Company reports progress in dealing with northern Ont. dam breach

While repairs are not yet completed, officials in Iroquois Falls said Thursday afternoon that progress has been made in dealing with a partial breach of the Twin Falls dam.

While repairs are not yet completed, officials in Iroquois Falls said Thursday afternoon that progress has been made in dealing with a partial breach of the Twin Falls dam.

H2O Power said the breach occurred Wednesday afternoon. The power-generating dam is about 100 years old and is located on the Abitibi River.

“Leakage has been significantly reduced while the team is working to seal the breach completely,” the company said in a news release.

“Additional engineering resources are now on site to assist the team. Risk to the town and surrounding community remains low and H2O Power continues to monitor the situation diligently.”

Ron Cariglia, an engineer with H2O Power, told CTV News a few details of how the breach occurred.

“One of the wing walls that started (to) leak and immediately we invoked an incident management plan that’s run out of our Oshawa operations with a team onsite here,” Cariglia said.

“The group’s working tirelessly to get a temporary seal in. Obviously, public safety and (the) environment is of biggest concern to get that flow stopped ... Then we’ll be working with the engineers to establish a permanent fix (and) put things back into a good state of repair.”