Operator testifies 6 gates were opened to chain‑hoist limit on May 18; a‑frames used after midnight as storm peaked

A former Edenville dam operator testified in the Court of Claims on Jan. 27 that contemporaneous handwritten spill logs show the six spillway gates at Edenville were recorded at about 7 feet on May 18, 2020, and that operators resorted to A‑frame hoists shortly after midnight on May 19 to open the gates further while a storm was underway.

The operator, who worked for Boyce Hydro beginning in 2017 and became chief operator around May 2019, said routine logkeeping combined handwritten notes and later electronic spreadsheets. Counsel walked the witness through defendant’s Exhibit 69, the 2020 spill logs, and pointed out final May 18 entries: Gate 1 recorded at 14:30, Gates 2 and 3 with last entries earlier that day, and entries on the tobacco spillway showing Gate 1 at 09:10, Gate 2 at 13:30 and Gate 3 at 15:30. The witness confirmed the last handwritten records for all six gates on May 18 were consistent with chain‑hoist lifts to about 6–7 feet.

The operator testified that ‘‘just after midnight on 05/19/2020, the operators used the a‑frames at the dam to get the gates up even higher’’ but that those actions were not reflected in the handwritten spill logs. "We were above all that, so we had no way of knowing how high we were," he said, describing that marks on the wall used to read gate position were submerged. He told the court A‑frames were used sparingly for safety reasons and that conditions during the storm made precise measurement impossible.

On cross‑examination lawyers emphasized that the operator’s embankment inspections were visual only and did not include borings, lab strength testing, seepage analysis or factor‑of‑safety calculations — technical steps required for an engineering determination of stability. The witness agreed he was not a geotechnical engineer and had not done that work.

The testimony established that contemporaneous paper records ended on the afternoon of May 18, that operators later used alternate lifting methods during the peak storm, and that there is no direct gauge or mark evidence in the handwritten logs to show the maximum gate openings achieved during the overnight operations on May 19. The court later recessed and moved on to other witnesses and recorded depositions as part of the multi‑week trial schedule.