Enaineer Memoirs
Relocating towns was not a new thing. As I go back to my district days, quite a few towns
were relocated. Most of the time the community cooperated. There was always a certain
anguish because people had to leave their homes. They were done with minimum turbulence,
but not Bonneville. Bonneville was a political game, and the Corps was the football; however,
it's done now.
There were other big projects that I can speak of. We should talk a little bit about the
problems of the lower Mississippi, which were not so much structural as they were
environmental. The old river diversion structure kept the Mississippi River in the Mississippi
River channel and precluded the river from going into the Atchafalaya. During the flood of
1974, the structure began to shake, rattle, and roll from great pressure and stress. The decision
was taken to relieve it with a new structure. The Atchafalaya is certainly among the one or
two most sensitive environmental areas in this country. The law on regulating the Mississippi
River established a minimum flow into the Atchafalaya at all times to keep the Atchafalaya
channel alive and also to provide water for the surrounding area, not people.
The Corps has come up with several plans to keep the Atchafalaya from filling up with
sediment. Every one of those plans runs into a great deal of environmental difficulty. I'm not
entirely sure what the present situation is; however, it did seem to me that the worst situation
was to do nothing. If you left it alone, it was going to get in trouble, so therefore, the problem
was, "What could you do?"
Everything that was attempted became an environmental tug-of-war. We never really solved
the Atchafalaya problem during my time.
was another new project in the West. During the period of time in June 1979
New
when it was being filled, and prior to the dedication, the 14th of July 1979, an individual
chained himself in the reservoir to a rock and said he was going to stay there and drown if
necessary. He didn't. New
was certainly one of the last of the big projects to be
completed and dedicated.
I think that's about enough. If there are specific questions on projects-there are just so many
conflicts, so many environmental problems: the lower Chesapeake Bay, the James River,
trouble on the Great Lakes because of the winds, et cetera.
What about Indian Bend Wash?
A
Oh, Indian Bend Wash. I mentioned that earlier. Indian Bend Wash is a successful
nonstructural solution in Scottsdale, Arizona. The city had help from Congressman [John
Jacob] Rhodes, who was on the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee. I'd
known him when I testified from the Missouri River Division. Rhodes was from Kansas
originally.
Anyhow, we came up with a scheme that we would build in the floodway through Scottsdale
some public facilities- r e c r e a t i o n , golf, and other
which if inundated would recover
quickly. There were limited regulatory structures in there: some embankment protection and
some channelization, but very minor. The entire area was landscaped. So when you go there,
you may not know you're in a flood plain.
That, to me, was a landmark case because the Corps had used a non structural approach and
produced a very fine example of how you could solve flood probl ems without building a dam.
Q ..
Should we touch briefly here on the urban studies program?
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