Lawton ready to proceed with design plans for Gondola dam

The City of Lawton is proceeding with plans that will improve an aging water feature while also benefitting Medicine Park.

City Council members recently agreed to amend their contract with Jacobs Engineering, letting that firm proceed with design plans for improvements to Gondola dam. The dam, on Medicine Creek just downstream from the Lake Lawtonka dam, is located in Medicine Park but is owned by the City of Lawton. Public Utilities Director Rusty Whisenhunt said the dam is 100 years old, and because of that age there is no as-built information, maintenance records or previous inspection records.

Engineers say the dam was built to form a small tilling pool just downstream from Lawton’s primary dam, but it also provides a small pool that the Town of Medicine Park has used as a recreational area for decades.

The overflow spillway for the damage is damaged — cracks and missing concrete are evident — and officials in Lawton and Medicine Park have been discussing plans for years about either repairing or rebuilding the structure. That potential became a possibility when the the State of Oklahoma designated $2 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding for what engineers tentatively estimated as a $2.2 million construction project during initial discussions in June.

Jacobs already had a contract to do a condition summary of the structure, a feasibility assessment for what will be done, concept development for the recommended option, and cost estimates. The $336,584 contract amendment approved by the Lawton City Council in late October will allow design plans to proceed. Officials have said the plan is to rehab the existing dam, with nine months designated for design plans that will outline a project to replace the concrete cap on all segments of the dam and install a new center cap, to include a weir for normal water flows. A weir is a structure used to prevent flooding, allowing water to flow over the top or sometimes underneath sections (dams typically do not allow water to flow over the top).

City officials have not identified a time frame for the construction project.

Funding is coming from allocations that Lawton is using to tackle several water-related upgrades, which also include deteriorating waterlines.