Water Resources: Hydraulics and Hydrology
utilization section in the branch. Our section included hydrology as well as hydraulic
structures. We were a fairly small group.
Was it true that most of the districts had those H and H branches well before OCE did?
Yes.
A:
They didn't do that until sometime in the `40's and apparently the districts had those branches
in the `30's.
I'm trying to think. Rock Island had a hydraulics branch in
think it was just called
hydraulics, but it included hydrology.
The Corps definition subsumed hydrology under hydraulics, although the hydrologists
disagreed with that.
A:
Yes.
Let me ask you a question that goes a little bit beyond this. Did you find that there were any
problems between the hydraulic engineers, like yourself, and the hydrologists as that
discipline developed its own theoretical underpinnings and desire to be separate?
A:
I don't think so. In general, Corps districts usually had very strong people as the branch head
of H and H and so I don't really think there was ever any problem like that.There certainly
wasn't in Little Rock. By the time I went to Sacramento in
I suppose, is when
hydraulics and hydrology were becoming more and more separate. I don't think there was
really a problem, but the two were not as closely interrelated as they had been previously.
Reservoir regulation became a separate responsibility sometime in the late `50's as more
reservoirs were completed and began to operate as a system. MRD established a reservoir
similar to one set up in the North
operation center while we were there (in about
Pacific Division.
That's what Frank Snyder started doing. In fact, he came back from Europe in 1946 andwas
in charge of reservoir regulation.
Yes.
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