Knight Construction & Supply Inc., of Deer Park, has landed two dam-repair contracts with a combined value of about $2.6 million.

One project is under way to repair damages on a gate on a navigation lock on the John Day Dam on the Columbia River, about 25 miles east of The Dalles, Ore., says Dave Lehto, a project manager for Knight Construction. The other will repair giant hinges on spillway gates at Foster Dam on the Santiam River, a tributary of the Willamette River in west-central Oregon, Lehto says.

The John Day project, which is valued at $1.6 million, involves work on the upstream end of the navigation lock. The gate was damaged last February when two empty barges rammed it. Since then, the lock has been operated with a temporary floating-bulkhead gate.

The damaged 85-foot-wide gate is more than 40 feet tall and weighs 200 tons, Lehto says. The work on it involves removing the gate from the dam, cutting off and replacing its damaged lower portion, and reinstalling the repaired gate. The project is scheduled to be completed this month.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the eight-lock system as part of a 355-mile inland barge route on the Columbia and Snake rivers, says more than 10 million tons of commodities a year are transported through the locks.

At Foster Dam, the hinges, called trunnions, on which the four spill gates pivot have warped from 40 years of stress, Lehto says.

Knight's $1 million contract there calls for repairing the trunnions of one of the 2,000-square-foot gates.

Under the contract, the company must complete the job by Jan. 15, when the gate might be needed for flood control, says the Corps, which also operates that dam.

Foster Dam's other three gates will be repaired in a second phase of work. No contractor has been selected yet for that phase.