Maintenance work on Crystal Reservoir Dam near Pikes Peak gears up this week

Colorado Springs, Colo. (KRDO) — The process of draining water out of popular and picturesque Crystal Reservoir started in 2020 so that a maintenance project could reach the point it did Tuesday.

Workers are removing the old coating of protective paint on the dam’s steel facing and applying a new coating — one that should last twice as long as the original coating’s effectiveness of 25 years.

The resurfacing is expected to continue through November, and the work can be done only during summer weather; issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic also delayed the project.

"The manufacturer who was making this special coating product could not get it anywhere in the world, and the backlog of all the orders was so large that it took almost 12 months for us to purchase the product." said Larysa Voronova, the utility's project manager.

Crystal is one of 25 reservoirs owned by Colorado Springs Utilities that provides customers with most of their drinking water.

Officials said that they expect to begin refilling Crystal over the winter and have to ready to fishing, boating and other recreation by next spring.

"It's an intregal part of our water supply, and it's also a dam above the cities," said Bill Sturtevant, the dam's safety manager. "So it needs to be monitored, inspected, maintained, repaired on a regular basis."

Late last year, workers also made improvements to the tunnel under the dam and to pipes and other mechanisms inside.

The dam was built in 1935 and is one of only five of its kind in the country, according to utility officials; four of those steel-face dams are on utility reservoirs.

Sturtevant said that the dam's construction was part of a federal program to provide jobs during the Great Depression.