Water Resources: Hydraulics-and Hydrology
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Hydropower
Q ..
So there are a lot of very complex factors that would go into some of those things.
It was really difficult for a while there. Gianelli was in the Assistant Secretary's office at
A
the time when that first got started. We were doing a lot of negotiating with people in
hydropower and trying to decide which projects they'd be willing to put hydropower,
future hydropower, too. Somebody would want to lay claim for future hydropower and
get the Corps to put in the minimum facilities to begin with when they were building the
projects so that eventually the hydropower could be added later on.
They were willing to pay a certain part of the cost of doing that because they had the
permit to put in the hydropower and they could do it at a later time. But there's a lot of
cost savings if they could do it right at the time the original structure was being built
rather than wait until afterwards and have to put it in. So the question became then,
"Well, how much money are you going to charge them for doing that and under what
circumstances will you do it?" The hydropower wasn't authorized as a part of the Federal
project.
So then when you go about building a project, somebody has to pay for that extra design
effort and all the extra construction and all that sort of thing. Is the Federal government
willing to do that and accept payment later or do they want their money today? All those
kinds of questions had to be resolved.
So there was a lot of negotiating, and Gianelli got involved in a lot of that himself. His
lieutenants would go out to our district offices and sit in negotiations themselves rather
than entrust it all to the Corps. They wanted to have the hands in a lot of these things and
didn't want to be caught unaware of what might be happening. So they wanted to be sure
they knew exactly what was happening on every project. But the only way they could
keep track of it was go and participate in the negotiation.
Q ..
Now that has to be a pretty good size gamble by a company to throw all that money up
front if they wanted to do that. So what was the resolution of that. Was it on a case by
case basis?
A
Well, I can't remember off hand exactly what the conclusions were, but in most cases they
didn't have to put up all the money right up front. They would be expected to repay the
cost in a certain time, and they'd have to start developing. The Federal Power
Commission had their rules set up so that you would get a permit and that's good for so
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