Vernon
They were big dams and took a lot of water to fill up the conservation storage. So those
years that they were filling up the conservation storage, why they never had any floods
downstream. Had all kinds of extra storage so they didn't have to worry about floods
while they were filling up.
Well, once they got full, why then they had to start doing this annual operation I was
talking about. When you do, many people get involved in deciding what the operation of
a major reservoir should be because you've got the people that live around the reservoir.
They don't want to be flooded by the reservoir being too high.
You've got power interests who don't want any water going out of the project unless it
goes through the powerplants because they're afraid of losing money. You've got the
irrigation people, they want the storage as full as you can get it so they have lots. While
the flood control people want it down as low as they can get it so you have lots of water
for flood control. Trying to coordinate all those interests together and get the right mix. . .
The fellow that taught me the most about that was named Emil McLendon, and he was in
charge of water control management for the Missouri River Division when they had all
those big projects on the Missouri River. He was a very sharp man. But he learned early
on in his operation management of those reservoirs. I don't know, maybe he learned it
from his boss, too - -Tim Wora, who was his previous boss. But they were the first ones
that really got involved in that upper Missouri water control management.
They learned early on to get all the interests together in making decisions. Don't try to
do it by yourself. Like the Corps people try to make all the decisions and then tell the
other people how it is going to be done. Because everybody will be screaming at them.
So what they did, they started off with the idea of having these operational meetings that
they would have. They would come up with a preliminary plan for operating the
reservoirs. Then at this meeting, why all of the interests from power, irrigation, states,
competition among states and all this sort of thing. All the state representatives would be
there. They would lay out their preliminary plan for how they were going to operate the
reservoir for that next year based on what the pool levels were at that time and what was
expected.
If one person, for example, if the fellow from the irrigation interest would argue strongly,
"Hey, you're not storing enough water," why immediately the flood control interest would
jump up and say, "The hell they're not, they're storing too much or something like that."
So they'd get all these people, and they'd usually end up getting their preliminary plan
approved because they didn't have to argue with the people that objected to it. The other
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