4. Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton A panoramic photo recently taken of the upper reservoir. The apparent distortion of the shape of the reservoir is a artifact caused by the panorama setting.

When talking about the construction of the Kinzua Dam, the dam tends to steal the show.

But it’s really not the most impressive engineering element of that project.

You have to literally look up the mountain for that – the upper reservoir.

Proof?

One million cubic yards of earth moved.

Times Observer file photo This photo ran in Times-Observer in 1968 unde the headline “SENECA POWER RESERVOIR COMPLETED.” The caption reported that the “circular reservoir, part of the electrical generating plant project, is now complete.” Gordon Mahan took the photo from 2,500 feet above the upper reservoir.

The capacity to hold 2.1 billion gallons of water.

Tunnels over a half mile long.

If you didn’t know, there’s a giant concrete bowl capable of holding 2.1 billion gallons of water on top of the hill that abuts the dam to the south. It’s part of the Seneca Pumped Storage Generating Station.

Water is pumped up to the upper reservoir overnight when electric rates are cheaper (the pump is located adjacent to the dam on the upstream side). The water is then – during peak electrical consumption hours – released from the upper reservoir, down tunnels over half a mile long and through turbines located at the power station just downstream of the dam before rejoining the Allegheny River.

While the whole system is a net consumer of electrical power by the time you figure in the power needed to pump the water up the hill overnight, the electricity provided during peak hours makes the system a valuable component of our regional electrical grid, generating approximately 570,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually.

Times Observer file photo This Pennsylvania Electric Company photo from the Times Observer archive shows the Kinzua Dam and upper reservoir. The intake structure can be seen just to the upstream side of the dam while the generating station is downstream on the far bank.

Why are we writing about this now?

We received an email out of the blue from Ken Koscik of Madison, Wisconsin a couple weeks ago asking if there were any 50th anniversary commemorative events for the project. While we’re not aware of any, Koscik agreed to share his memories of the construction of the project and of the three plus years he and his family lived in Warren.

For Koscik, the opportunity to work as an engineer overseeing elements of the upper reservoir would launch a career that saw him rise to the director of public works for Dane County, Wisconsin, which has a population of over 500,000 people.

His employer, Harza Engineering out of Chicago, had been contracted to design the power station and the connecting tunnels.

Koscik – with his wife and baby son – came to Warren in 1966.

“I started out as a young engineer on the upper reservoir, keeping a handle on what was going on up there,” he told the Times Observer, “making sure it was built in the proper manner.”

The dam itself was essentially complete by the time work started on the power project, he explained.

He detailed the major components of the project.

“(We) had to build an intake structure on the upstream side of the dam” as well as “short connecting conduits to the powerhouse itself,” which housed the generators and turbines needed to turn the water flow into consumable electricity.

A tunnel also had to be constructed up to the upper reservoir, which sits 800 feet above the Allegheny Reservoir.

Koscik said the construction of those elements happened concurrently.

He said the tunnel goes up at about an 11 percent slope half a mile into the hillside. Then a vertical shaft had to be drilled “to try to hit that tunnel that was excavated there half a mile deep.”

The first three attempts all missed.

“We didn’t have GPS where we could locate stuff,” Koscik, noting that the surveying was done the “old fashioned way. An outside company was brought in that hit it on the first try – first drilling a 10-inch shaft, 565 feet long, that was expanded to six feet.

But what to do with all the earth from that shaft?

“All of the rock was excavated from the top down and dropped down the six-foot shaft,” he said. “All the other excavation that was done in the upper reservoir was done to create the berm around the upper reservoir.”

One million cubic yards of dirt.

“That was pretty unheard of at that point in time,” Koscik said “There were two shifts – day shift and night shift, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. All kinds of lights. There was a lot of blasting to excavate the rock. (We) had a big fleet of scrapers and a big fleet of trucks loaded by shovel and front-end loaders.”

The rock was extracted separately from the softer material.

“Then we would drive all of that dirt up to wherever we were building the berm that went all the way around.”

He said it’s “easy to draw a circle” on the diagram but noted “it was all woods up there to start with. By the time I got there, it was all cleared.”

While the system is a net-consumer of electric, Koscik said that is the “beauty of it.”

“There’s no demand on that coal fire plant during the night,” he said, so the power needed to pump the water up to the upper reservoir “was cheap, practically free.

When the water comes back down?

“That was peak load and peak dollars for those kilowatts. A very economical way to do it.”

Challenges with constructing the intake structure on the upstream side of the dam provided Koscik a new opportunity.

“(They had a) tough time getting that built,” he said. “I was asked to go down there.”

He identified personality clashes that were complicating the effort.

“I got along good with just about everybody,” he said. “(They) put me down there and (we) got the thing built.”

With the intake structure complete, he then served as “office engineer, head of the office, for all of the concrete pours.”

Each pour had a separate drawing and Koscik said he was “responsible to kind of make sure that everything that was on the drawing was supposed to be on the drawing and inspecting in the field when it was being build.

“It was a great experience for me. I loved every minute of it. Not many engineers get to be a part of something that big. I was lucky.”

But his luck wasn’t just professional. It was personal, too.

When he first came to Warren, he was on his own before moving his wife and baby son out a couple weeks later.

“We were very lucky to find this little house on Division St. across from George and Rachel Spangler,” he said. “They rented the house to us for the three and a half years that we were there and never once raised the rent in three and a half years. (We) paid $100 a month which was very reasonable.

“George was absolute salt of the earth. So was Rachel. We couldn’t have had better landlords. They took is un and treated us very well.”

Koscik and his family joined the First Lutheran Church and Ken was involved with Boy Scout Troop 12.

He said other people from Chicago working on the project would complain about people in town being cold but Koscik would asked them if they were involved in the community (and they would say they weren’t).

“We jumped in,” he said, knowing they would be here three years. “We want to be a part of the community, belonging to a church, Boy Scouts… My fondest memories are the people that we met there and the way we were treated.

“Building the dam was exciting from an engineering and career standpoint (but we) never forgot the friendliness of the people,” specifically mentioning Jim Keller, Carl Thomas and John Bimber,.

Giving the timing of when he came to Warren, Koscik said he never sensed much of the anti-Kinzua Dam sentiment.

When the project was completed, the Koscik family — with a daughter born here in Warren — went back to Chicago for a year. After some international work, Koscik said he obtained a job as city engineer on Monona, Wisconsin, before becoming the director of public works for Dane County, where the state capital, Madison, is located.

“That job in Pennsylvania, when I applied for these other jobs… (the experience) was important to get the job as city engineer…. We cried when we left town. We could have stayed there the rest of my life. (Warren is a) beautiful place to be.”