Water Resources: Hydraulics and Hydrology
problems and solutions that are being used by design engineers.
Q ..
So they, themselves, generated a lot of the solutions and then formalized them in reports?
A:
Yes. I don't have many of the committee's reports, but they can be obtained from WES.
The Waterways Experiment Station representatives on the committee usually served as
secretary of the committee. Joe Tiffany was elected secretary during the second meeting.
Clarence Wicker was elected chairman. Tiffany served as secretary all the time that
Wicker was
That's about years. Then Tiffany became chairman, and Henry
Simmons was secretary until Tiffany retired, when Henry became chairman. He got one
of his WES secretaries to serve as committee secretary. All of the records and reports of
the Committee on Tidal Hydraulics are in the WES library. I wasn't as interested in tidal
hydraulic problems because I was always more interested in dams and high-velocity
channel flow. So I didn't keep many of those reports.
You were just sitting in on that committee to provide whatever you could to the Chief's
office and the technical expertise you could provide?
That's right.
What were your favorite committees, then, if this one was sort of one you just went to?
A:
[Laughter]. A few years later the Committee on Channel Stabilization was established,
and I was elected chairman at the very first meeting. I was still chairman when I retired,
and then they asked me to serve as a committee consultant. Every time they had a
meeting, they wanted me to be there and enter into the discussions. I did that for three or
four years.
The committee met with districts that had open channel erosion problems. We had several
meetings in the Omaha District to discuss erosion problems along the Missouri River.
Specifically, most rivers have unprotected banks, which are eroded during floods by too
high velocities, so they need to be protected by stone or concrete. Usually, there were
several ways to correct a problem, but the question was which way was the most effective
and least costly. Most of the time, the committee was able to suggest a solution previously
used and proven to be effective, but, occasionally, for new, more complex problems,
model tests were needed.
who was a member of the committee, retired one year before I did. After
Brad
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