Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
A:
I was there a year and a half ago, and they had not yet raised the pool. I guess it's raised now.
Anyway, it's a good story of how good things do turn out, and with a good outcome for the
environment. There was the lucky happenstance of the fault cutting off the groundwater, or
we'd never been able to proceed. Second, though, we stuck to our guns that we could do it,
but if we're going to do it, it had to be done environmentally correctly. Then we figured out
the ways, no longer a technical solution--we had the technical design all done--but figuring
out the ways through the political process to get the laws fixed so we took care of the
environment.
Q:
I mean, it sounds like you had support for this position from headquarters and from the
assistant secretary's office. Is that the case?
A:
We brought it up to Washington and we briefed General Heiberg. I think he was basically
skeptical from his own experience in the Ohio River Division. John Wall, the Director of
Civil Works, supported us, went with us over to see Congressman Perkins and took the gaff,
as I mentioned, so certainly we had support from him.
As for the secretary's office, if there was a buck to be saved, they would rather save it than
spend it, but I believe this just was a battle they didn't want to join. They had several others
going and probably thought Yatesville would die of its own weight, the state would never
come through, and so Gianelli never participated and allowed the process to continue.
Q:
What about the Big South Fork?
A:
The Big South Fork National River and Recreation area was on the border of Tennessee and
Kentucky. It was a neat project, not well known by many folks, even today. You ask people
about the Yellowstone of the East, or the Big South Fork, and you get a blank stare.
Down in Oneida, Tennessee, they know about it. It is a National Park Service park of some
considerable size, 103,000 acres. It involves the upper gorge of the Cumberland River and is
quite a nice area, a lot of palisades and caves--very rustic. There are old coal mines in the
area, deep gorges, a lot of hills, and white water rafting and canoeing. It is very rustic.
The whole idea of the park was to provide an outdoor experience for people. It's not a
"Yellowstone of the East" where you can go find geysers. What you find is the real outdoors.
If you want to hike, if you want to ride horseback into the wilderness, if you want to do those
kinds of things, or raft down a river, or canoe down a river, it's there. The concept was to
leave it wild and rustic, not make it glitzy.
What Nashville District did to develop it was to procure the land, build a bridge over the
river at the base of the valley, and construct two major public use areas--Bandy Creek in
Tennessee and Blue Heron in Kentucky--and some other facilities. The existing bridge was
just a low-level bridge that flooded over during high water. When the water goes down, you
use it again. Nashville constructed a high bridge up and over the valley so all year long you
could get from one rim to the other rim.
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