A 130-year-old dam. Three million cubic yards of contaminated sediment. 500,000 people downstream. Kiewit built the solution — and our formliners were part of what they poured.
The Lake Conestee Dam sits on the Reedy River just seven miles south of downtown Greenville, SC — built in 1892 to power Conestee Mill, designed to last fifty years, and still standing 130 years later. Behind it: an estimated three million cubic yards of sediment laced with metals, pesticides, and PAHs from decades of textile industry runoff. As long as the dam held, the cap held. But the structure was deteriorating, and the margin for error was gone.
Rather than attempt to repair the failing original structure — which risked disturbing the contamination — engineers chose a different path entirely. Kiewit Infrastructure South Co. was brought in under a progressive design-build contract to construct a brand-new roller-compacted concrete dam fifty feet downstream of the original. The new structure would take control of the river, leaving the old stone dam submerged and sealed. It's a solution that addresses both the structural failure and the environmental risk at once.
Construction began in January 2025, with a groundbreaking ceremony on February 28. To keep the project on schedule, Kiewit built an onsite concrete batch plant adjacent to the old mill — a critical decision that allowed continuous production throughout placement. For 33 straight days, day crews set formwork and night crews placed concrete in uninterrupted lifts. Moreover, the team sequenced the RCC placement to gain elevation quickly, reducing their exposure to the flashy watershed and the storm events that had previously set the schedule back.
Spec Formliners supplied the form liners for the concrete work on this project. The result is a finished dam face that reflects the care put into every pour — concrete that performs structurally and reads architecturally, even on infrastructure this demanding.
Whether it's a dam, a retaining wall, a tilt-up facade, or anything in between — we engineer the formliner to match your vision, your environment, and your timeline.