Margaret S. Petersen
Right. Primarily Kerr.
A:
Q:
Was the problem with the river banks basically the soils there?
A:
It's partly the geology. Downstream from Dardanelle there are very few places where there
is rock in the banks. It's basically an alluvial river that just meanders and changes course.
The other problem is that flows vary greatly. The river essentially dried up in the summer,
and I don't remember what the peak flows are, but I would say 600,000 cfs, 700,000 cfs in
the 1927 flood. Just tremendously high flows. Now there is this nice stable river always in
the same place, with hundreds of recreational boaters as well as commercial traffic. The
recreational use that has developed and the parks that have been established--especially in
the Little Rock area--are unbelievable in contrast to conditions in the '50's.
In all of the cutoff areas you mean, or all throughout it.
The boat launching ramps and so forth are, primarily, right along the main channel in the
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Little Rock reach.
River Bank Stabilization Studies
The: bank stabilization studies were ongoing throughout the Corps of Engineers at that time.
Was the Arkansas just one of those areas?
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Yes, the Corps had been doing bank protection work on the Sacramento and in the southeast.
Some of the dikes ("wing dams") along the Upper Mississippi were constructed back in the
`20's and `30's.
How did you solve the problem of stabilizing the banks and stabilizing the channel on the
Arkansas?
Basically the same way it's been done on other alluvial rivers, laying out an alignment that
A:
looks like it's what the river would like to do. That is, you determine which bends are
generally stable, what the radius is, the width and length of crossings between bends.
did some consulting for the Vicksburg District in the '80's on the Red River, when they
were building locks and dams on the Red. It was very interesting to me that they used the
criteria that we developed on the Arkansas for pilot channels, so that the river will develop
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