Boggs lake flood gate kill off

[kenny]

I heard a story, last year at drawn down that a tree knocked the screenoff of your under water drian and alot of fish got out ,Is there any truth to that.

[MikeAxsom]

Thanks for helping prove my point. There is no such thing as a fish screen in a dam bottom intake. Any such screen would be subjected to a massive amount of pressure on the upstream side. Instead of preventing a fish from getting out, the likely result would be that a fish that got near it would be sucked through the screen in bits the size of the holes in the screen. Alternately the fish might just be sucked against the screen and held there to die, and then be sucked through the screen as it decomposed. At 33 feet, which is the actual depth of the West Boggs intake, the pressure would be equal to roughly two atmospheres of pressure. So, the answer to your question is “no”, there is no truth to the story. According to the design prints, the nearest thing to a screen on the intake is a trash rack made of angle iron spaced about 16 inches apart.