Water, Resouikes: Hydraulics and Hydrology
was. I don't think that's true of a lot of lawyers. But we won. I think we won the
first lawsuit.
Then the second lawsuit, there was another flood later on. They claimed that the
dam tender opened the gates all opened at once. The gates were set so that the
tilting elevation was at several different levels. They were wood gates with hinges
and with seals on the edges of the gates to make them watertight. The friction on
those gates, it would be different on every gate.
The way they were supposed to work, when the water got to a certain level, a gate
would tip and then the water would drop. When it worked up again, when it got to
a certain level, supposedly another gate would tip. But the people suing, their
attorney claimed that the dam tender had tipped them, or they had all tipped at once,
which sent a flood wave down stream.
Ordinarily, witnesses aren't allowed in, during the proceedings. But Armistead
always got the permission of the judge to let me sit with him in the courtroom.
When they were picking the jury, one of the prospects was an engineer. I don't
remember what kind of an engineer he was, but they thought that would be good to
have an engineer on the jury. So he was on the jury. We lost the case.
Armistead knew everybody in Alexandria. If he'd go down the street, he knew
everybody and he was an outgoing person that was friendly and polite to everybody.
He found out from the bailiff, that this engineer had insisted that if those gates were
designed to tip a certain way, they would absolutely tip that way. There'd be no
friction or anything. It wouldn't make any difference on these gates. So he argued
that they would all tip at once. I guess that was the reason we lost the case.
Then, at that time, the Alexandria water supply was owned by a private company
out of Philadelphia. The dam there on the Occoquan, they raised the dam and made
a much bigger reservoir, and so they had to go around and settle all the land titles.
There were a lot of lawsuits in connection with their taking of the land. I was in on
some of those cases with Arrnistead Booth.
The Corps has very rigid rules. They only take what they need. But the water
company would buy a whole piece of land. They had a lot of land around that
reservoir they didn't need. Armistead and I kept talking about buying some of that
surplus land, but he was too busy to do anything about it. Then it got to the point
where, I guess they figured it wouldn't look right if the water company sold their
attorney a piece of land like that. But that land is being used now, all around that
reservoir.
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