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The Randleman dam is an impressive piece of engineering, especially from the top looking down.

Tons of water cascade down its stairstep concrete spillway, giving it the appearance of a giant, manmade waterfall.

The water is overflowing because the lake is full. What a welcome sight.

I got the chance to see the dam and reservoir up close on Monday -- much closer than before -- in a tour with former Greensboro City Councilman Tom Phillips (the accompanying photos are his).

Phillips has been a member of the Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority, which oversees the dam and reservoir, since 1992.

On a cold, blustery, overcast day in which the wind whipped through the trees and turned our cheeks red, it had snowed earlier. Spring indeed.

Anyway, we rode in an SUV onto a driveway on the top of the structure, which keeps enough H2O at bay to create Randleman Lake, a soon-to-be regional water source for Greensboro, High Point and three other communities.

Then we took a gravel road to the base of the dam and stepped through a padlocked fence and a steel door into its innards.

In a dank, dimly lit tunnel lined with pipes that spans the entire length of the spillway, water drips like steady rain in the corridor and limestone coats some of the walls. You get the impression you're in a cave. Or a dungeon in one of the those old black-and-white Boris Karloff horror flicks.

Drip ... Drip ... Drip.

Then it occurred to me: Water? Leaks?.

Tom didn't wait for me to say anything. He'd apparently read my panicked expression.

Not to worry, Tom said. It's supposed to do that.

We stepped over puddles into the heart of the dam. I wanted to be able to say I had walked the whole thing. I also prayed to myself that the vast majority of the water would stay where it belonged: outside.

There were circuit breakers and switches and gutters on either side of the walkway that funneled small streams ... to somewhere.

A chain link fence topped with barbed wire surrounds the reservoir and a number of hard-to-miss signs make it clear that unauthorized visitors are not welcome.

Still, people seem drawn to the lake and the terrain around. Phillips says some of the locals like to run their ATVs on the hilly trails. One tresspasser injured himself and had to airlifted by helicopter to a hospital, he says.

Phillips says a couple came to the dam to drink beer and wound up falling over the edge. They, too, had to be hospitalized.

Some obvisouly see it as an amusement attraction, but the dam is more significant because of the water it will provide, the growth it will allow.

Not that it hasn't been a long, long time coming.

The dam has taken nearly a lifetime to become reality. The political and regulatory barriers were formidable but it probably is the best, most hopeful example of regional cooperation in Triad history.

The truth be told, the participating governments still don't fully trust one another. But the project has gotten done anyway. All that's left to do is build a pump station and a treament plant and connect it all with pipelines.

In two or three years (maybe sooner), you and I will be sipping water from that lake.

For all the hydraulic and structural engineering it took to get it all done, the most amazing feat of engineering was the regional collaboration that made it all happen.

Wish I could bottle that and save it for a rainy day.