they really got chewed out for that. But that was the sort of thing we wanted to
avoid. There is always a problem. You've got so much reservoir space and you
have a flood. Well, should you use all of that space for that flood and then not have
any left if one comes next week? Or how much should you use on the first flood,
and how much should you save for future floods? So there's always a problem there
in deciding how to operate. That was the thing we specialized in figuring out ways
to do that.
The big problem, really the big problem, in reservoir regulation is the releases.
When they make the studies and justify the economics of a project, they have a
theoretical channel capacity downstream, so they make the study assuming that they
can leave out X-amount of water. Well, after the project is built, if they leave out
X-amount of water, everybody downstream yells, "Murder, because it's affecting
them. So it's pretty hard to preserve your storage space. As soon as there are flood
conditions, you should leave out all you can unless you're in a special situation
where you're coordinated with some other project downstream.
In a normal situation, you leave out as much as you can so that you're saving all of
the space that you can. With the people downstream screaming their heads off, it's
pretty hard to do that. It's pretty hard to cause some damage downstream even
though you're supposed to do that. The pressure gets pretty heavy not to leave out
as much water as you should. And so then when the additional floods come in, you
lose control because you've lost all of your space.
The people upstream scream for being flooded and the people downstream scream.
It's just a situation where, I guess, it takes diplomacy as well as everything else to
get the people downstream to recognize what you're doing. I'm sure some offices
do that better than others.
Q ..
That's a very difficult thing to do. I mean people don't like to be flooded. They're
sitting on those rivers and saying "Why did you build that dam up there to prevent
floods and now you're flooding me."
A ..
Right. Sometimes you only have the one flood and so you have, after it's over and
you put out this X-amount of water, space left in the reservoir. The people can't
understand that.
Q ..
They don't understand there has to be space or you're in big trouble, right?
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