Spillway Armoring - Happy Lake

Near the Florida-Georgia line is a private property nestled on a sprawling 15,500 acres that contains a 65-acre lake, named Happy Lake. Happy Lake has a limestone subsoil stratum. The owner's goal is to create a trophy fishing lake in hopes of growing world record Largemouth Bass. The manager of the fisheries program firmly believes that the waters have the potential to produce the standing work record, a 22-pound, 4-ounce Largemouth Bass that was caught almost a century ago.

A 62’ wide spillway was built to handle the overflow from frequent tropical storms that hit this area near the Florida-Georgia line. The spillway design was to grade a 1.25% bed slope for a length of 270’ to handle up to a 1.5’ depth of flow. The specification required 19 rolls of 15.5’x62’ Flexamat Plus. We shipped 4 truckloads of Flexamat compared to 128 truckloads if the design had been rock rip rap.

Benefits to utilizing Flexamat include:

· The open area of the blocks, allow for other plants than just grass, like native plant sprigging to provide an esthetic finish to the Plantation.

· Superior storm protection using a tied block system versus loose rock.

· Flexamat is delivered in truckload quantities of 4800 SF. This is equivalent to 32 truckloads of rock, greatly reducing the volume of traffic over the dam.