After several months of digging down, work on the City of Cullman’s Duck River dam is finally about to start building up.

By the end of November, engineer of record CH2M Hill’s Rick Riker said they should be “virtually” 100 percent finished with excavation work. Riker said they have been pleased overall with the findings during excavation in recent months, and are reaching a point where they can start building some components of the dam.

“A lot of what’s been done to this point is excavation, to get us down to a level that will serve as a foundation for the dam,” he said at a Duck River Advisory Board meeting earlier this week. “It’s really starting to take shape, getting down to the level of rock we want to be on.”

So what comes next? Contractors will start laying roller-compacted concrete (RCC) to build the dam’s spillway — something Riker said will be a huge moment for the project up to this point. They plan to lay a “test pad” of RCC later this week ahead of the full gamut of work.

“We’ll be building up next, which is a major milestone,” he said. “After Christmas you’ll be able to see part of the spillway there.”

As for the aggregate needed for construction, a fully-automated batch plant has been built on the work site to process material from the on-site quarry.

“In order to reach this point it’s taken a lot of work,” Riker said. “We’ve made big strides.”

 The reservoir project will create a 640-acre lake with a 32-million-gallon-per-day capacity in northeast Cullman County, which will work in conjunction with the area’s current sole major water source, Lake Catoma. The design will be a hybrid, with roller-compacted concrete in the center and earthen wings.

The Duck River project has been in the works for more than a decade, after being permitted by the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers than subsequently delayed by environmental challenges that have since been resolved.

The water reservoir project was most recently marred by five violations by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM), largely related to potential storm water runoff and discharges within the watershed at the work site. The violations were reportedly noted during an impromptu ADEM inspection of the site on July 11. It marked the first time the project has been cited by ADEM for violations.

The total project is expected to cost approximately $110 million.

* Trent Moore can be reached by e-mail at trentm@cullmantimes.com, or by telephone at 734-2131, ext. 134.