Vernon
But he was telling us about how he used water quality storage at that time they were going
strong on water quality storage and he'd say, "You can use this water quality storage for
flood control. I said, "What do you mean?" "Well, you can use water supply storage
for flood control. I said, "Well, that theory is all right out in the West where you've got
snow to forecast runoff and you can have some idea what your floods are going to look
like. But I said, "How are you going to do that out here in the East?"
He says, "Oh, well, the Weather Service, they've got this good forecasting from radar
now. They know where storms are and where they're going to travel. They can see the
storm coming over this area, and you've got two or three days, you can release the water
out of the reservoir and have the reservoir empty for when the storm comes over the basin.
Then you fill it up, fill the storage back up again.
I said, "Well, that sounds great but what are you going to tell the city fathers that are
depending on that water supply to provide their M&I water for the community if the storm
goes the other direction? "Well, he says, "The Weather Service, they need to know how
to get forecasting down so they can predict that. I said, "Well, you're forgetting that
they're not capable of doing it." So it's just little things like that if you don't think about
them or pay attention to them, the theories go right down the drain.
You can imagine what a community would say if you had let all of their water supply out
of the reservoir because a flood was coming when the flood didn't materialize. Then they
didn't have any water for water supply. They would be really angry. Probably run you
out of town and tar and feather you or something.
Q ..
At the very least. Well, a critical problem has always been the gap between theory and
practice.
It's a tough one to fill because people are really oriented toward the scientific bent. Like
A
to deal a lot in equations and procedures that are easy to work out to a neat answer. But
most
who work in engineering, they got problems from their textbook that always
worked out to nice neat answers. But when you got out in the field, and you try to apply
them with that same procedure to actual data, it never works out.
You can't get a nice simple answer from the data you get out in the field. It just never
works out. You've got to make some adjustments here or there or try to figure out why
this storm didn't really give that amount of water or was there something different than
they apparently observed there. Crazy things happen.
Previous Page
