A
Well, I don't know. The big problem was the debris. In other words, whenever
they had a heavy storm in those gullies and everything, the debris was always a
major concern. It's pretty hard to predict how much of that you're going to get
when *designing them and during operations. Generally, I guess, in their life, there
was enough allowance for it and it hadn' t really caused too much trouble. I suppose
as time goes on, and maybe even now, some of them have been filled up quite a bit.
Q.
I think they clean them out all of the time.
l
A ..
Yes, some of them which are primarily debris dams. Since they're dry part of the
year, why they can do that. On some of the dams I worked overseas on, it was
always a concern as to how much reserve capacity was needed. Some of them they
tried to design so that at a certain time of the year, they would let a fair amount of
water through the lower conduits and try to get rid of a lot of the sediment. There
was always an argument whether you could accomplish that or not.
Q ..
I was going to ask you about the problem of contaminants or polluted materials in
the sediment in the dam because that's something that Verne Hagen talked about
becoming a problem for the Corps during the environmental era. But when you
figured, you were doing your estimates, how much did sediment figure into your
calculations on regulating the reservoirs?
A
Well, there were fairly definite criteria. Of course, I don't mean as to estimating.
They had to use procedures. I don't mean that those procedures were definite as to
estimating the amount of the sediment. But having made an estimate, well then the
requirements for providing space for it were pretty clean cut and everything so that
the design just went ahead.
Another project that Hathaway pushed was to get the Corps and other agencies that
had dams to establish permanent surveying facilities so they could measure the
amount of sediment that was actually deposited in the various projects. I'm sure the
Corps is still doing that periodically. The subcommittee on sedimentation
coordinated the program and has published a number of reports. As each dam was
surveyed, why the data would be compiled and published. That was a major activity
of the sub-committee on sedimentation. Hathaway was one that was able to make
sure that the field offices would establish the markers and do these surveys from
time-to-time. It took money to do it, and they'd have to budget for it.
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