Jacob
Douma
retiring, he wrote a report about all of the problems that the committee had worked on.
A copy of the report is in the reference material that I plan to donate to the Corps' Office
of History.
Committee on Streambank Erosion Control
Another committee that I worked on concerned the Corps' Streambank Erosion Control
Program that was authorized by Congress in Section 32 of a 1960's Flood Control Act.
It funded a study on ways of preventing erosion of streambanks [and] to make field
tests to develop new methods of bank protection for big rivers, like the Arkansas,
Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers. I was appointed chairman of the committee and served
until my retirement. I organized the committee very similar to the Committee on Channel
Stabilization.
When funds were provided to do the research, as Chief of the Hydraulics Branch, I was
assigned the job of organizing the program, I established a committee which operated
somewhat like the Committee on Channel Stabilization. When I retired, all of the field
research was completed, and they were going to start to use the methods that we had
developed at several different sites. I don't know whether this has been done or not. I
didn't follow up on that because most of my private consulting has been on dams.
At its first meeting, the committee concluded that the study should be based primarily on
full-scale field tests. Bank erosion sites were selected on several rivers for constructing
and testing alternative methods of protecting the streambank. The districts involved did
the construction and monitored the test sections. After every flood, they'd check whether
there was any erosion and report to the committee on how the different alternative methods
stood up.
In this way, the weak alternatives were eliminated and the best methods were identified.
Sometimes there wasn't much difference between two or more of the methods. Then, the
preferable method would be the one that was the most economical.
Q ..
So you actually tested the solutions in the field?
A:
Yes. The Committee on Tidal Hydraulics didn't do actual field testing of alternative
solutions. It asked the districts to make prototype measurements when the river is in flood
or the tides are coming in. The committee used the prototype measurements to check the
theory that they were using to solve the particular tidal hydraulic problem.
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