Franklin F. Snyder
Q ..
There were a lot of procedures you had to install and policies that had to be
implemented.
A ..
Right, yes. I don't know when the engineering manual started, whether we had
them right away. Eventually, that's the way we sent out the guidance on how to do
things. Eventually, all of this stuff was in the engineering manuals. There were
engineering manuals on the spillway design and most other features of project
design.
Q ..
A lot of that was entered into the whole planning and design process, so I guess it
had not been in it before, the requirements for the hydrologic studies.
A ..
It was what?
Q ..
They had to put that all into the design process.
A ..
Yes.
Q ..
A lot of it had not been considered before.
A ..
I don't know how they did it before they used this rainfall data and computed flood
design. Design was probably based on study of past floods. But that's where the
unit hydrographs got used, the synthetic unit hydrographs, because the Weather
Bureau gave them the rainfall, but the field offices had to convert this rainfall into
stream flows, and most of the offices used unit hydrographs. They weren't
necessarily synthetic ones. If you had a stream flow record, you could develop a
unit hydrograph from the records of past storms. But then to transfer it from where
your gauge was to where you wanted to use it, the synthetic procedure had these
factors in it which allowed you to make a transfer. In other words, you would
determine the factors at a place where you had records, and then apply it at the dam
site or wherever you subdivided the basin.
Q ..
Well, one of the problems, too, was that there weren't a lot of really good records
for all of the river basins in the country.
A.
No, there weren't.
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