Omemee Dam

Project Highlights

The community of Omemee is situated close to Lindsay, in Ontario, also the the childhood home of Canadian musician Neil Young.
The word Omemee means pigeon in the Mississauga language; the Omemee tribe once hunted this area.
The Omemee Dam is located on Pigeon Lake and indeed all of this cannot be a mere coincidence: The pigeons in Pigeon town, on Pigeon River, on Pigeon Dam became a nuisance to The Queen and Pigeon Busters was called in.
At the two ends of the dam, stop logs are lowered and lifted periodically to influence the water level and the structural enclosure and crane has become the favourite nesting area of the pigeons. Needless to say that the accumulated droppings and nesting material started to affect the operating crew and the structure negatively.
The steel structures were completely exposed on all sides with a variety of beams, sills and ledges that provided the perfect shelter for the local pigeons.
Pigeon Busters was contracted to design and install an exclusion system to keep pigeons out of the operating area. The structure was built with moving parts and opening doors, it posed a lot of challenges in the design, but with a clever hybrid of bird netting and spikes strategically placed and some custom fabricated components the problem was eliminated.