Exploring Our Industrial Heritage – The Hoover Dam (Part I)
My wife Kelly and I travelled to Nevada this summer to take a tour of the Hoover Dam and we are so glad that we made this journey. We were awed by the dam and truly inspired by it's story. We uncovered four aspects of the Hoover Dam that I will write about in this article series as we explore this chapter of our industrial heritage, the Hoover Dam.
The Hoover Dam is number one on the list of the seven wonders of the industrial world and if you have ever seen and toured the dam, then you understand why it is so amazing. Needless to say, the dam is an impressive structure in-and-of-itself. Seeing it for the first time is a "WOW!" type of experience. The dam is massive and Lake Mead (the body of water that the dam created) is a beautiful sprawling lake in a desert setting and is enjoyed recreationally by many people while still supporting the habitat of the diverse wildlife in the area.
The societal benefits of the dam are undeniably impressive as well. Hoover Dam provides irrigation benefits to over 1,500,000 acres of land in the southwest United States while also helping to provide water to over 16,000,000 people. The low cost power generated by the seventeen power units at Hoover Dam provides enough energy to power over 500,000 homes. Hoover Dam was built for a cost of just $49 million ($760 million adjusted for inflation). The power plant and generators cost an additional $71 million. The sale of electrical power generated by the dam paid back its full construction cost, with interest, by 1987.
The dam's majesty, functionality and purpose justifies its place on the list of the seven wonders and when you take deeper-dive into its design and history, its awesomeness just expands.
Four aspects of the Hoover Dam that inspired Kelly and I during our tour of the dam include:
- The leadership
- The design and engineering of the build
- The logistics involved with building it
- The grit and determination of the workforce that labored to build it.
Hoover Dam Leadership
Project Initiation: Arthur Powell Davis
Problems exist everywhere in the world and the only obstacle that stands in the way between a problem and a solution is good leadership. In 1902, the Director of Federal Reclamation Services, Arthur Powell Davis identified the problem. At the time, in the Imperial Valley of Southern California, water was a big problem and the area could not be settled until the water problem was solved. The first problem was a lack of water. The arid, desert-like environment could not be farmed. This problem was solved by irrigating the Colorado River. This worked great at first, the land was fertile and the farming communities in Southern California flourished initially. But then in 1905 and again in 1907 the Colorado River flooded the Imperial Valley and devastated all of the newly established farmland. Davis proposed an unthinkable project; to build a giant dam in the Boulder Canyon and finally tame and control the Colorado River. Davis also proposed that the dam include hydro-power generators, such that the dam project could generate a revenue stream to help fund the project costs.
Government Leadership: Herbert Hoover
Residents of the area looked to the federal government for aid, support and a solution. The greatest obstacle to the construction of such a dam was the allocation of water rights among the seven states comprising the Colorado River drainage basin. What was needed was a formal agreement for the equitable apportionment of the water between the states. The state legislatures responded during the early months of 1921 by authorizing their governors to appoint commissioners to negotiate an interstate agreement. Additionally, President Harding appointed Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover as the representative of the federal government and Hoover thus served as the chairman of the Colorado River Commission.
The seven states disagreed over what constituted a fair distribution of water. The upstream states feared that the downstream states, with their rapidly developing agricultural and power demands, would quickly preempt the lion’s share of the water. Hoover suggested that the water be divided between the upper and lower basins, without attempting to determine individual state quotas. This compromise proved to be the key for reaching an agreement. The resulting Colorado River Compact, signed on November 24, 1922, split the river basin into upper and lower halves with the states within each region deciding amongst themselves how the water would be divided.
A series of bills calling for Federal funding to build the dam were introduced by Congressman Phil D. Swing and Senator Hiram W. Johnson between 1922 and 1928, all of which Congress rejected for various reasons. The last of the Swing-Johnson bills, largely written by Secretary of Commerce Hoover and Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work, was finally approved by Congress on December 18, 1928 as the Boulder Canyon Project Act. Appropriations for the project were passed in subsequent years, and construction of the dam began in 1930.
Without Hoover's excellent negotiating skills, the dam project would have fizzled-out before it even started. His ability to get state legislators and congress to agree, really moved the project forward. The Hoover Dam was initially named the Boulder Dam, but was renamed the Hoover Dam in 1931 because of Hoover's influence in getting the project passed through the states and the federal government.
Project Leadership: S.D. Bechtel, Henry J. Kaiser, Felix Khan and Charles A. Shea.
Once the project was approved, six different companies came together and formed one joint company, a consortium literally called Six Companies Inc. Four leaders arose from these six companies to become the Hoover Dam project leadership team. These four men were S.D. Bechtel, Henry J. Kaiser, Felix Khan and Charles A. Shea. These men coordinated and led all aspects of the dam building which included logistics and construction involving 4.4 million cubic yards of concrete, 8 million pounds of plate steel and outlet pipes, 6.7 million pounds of pipe and fittings and 45 million pounds of reinforced steel. This team used a detailed Gnant Chart to manage the timeline. Most impressively the team was able to finished the dam in only five years. this was two years ahead of schedule and they did it under budget too.
Leadership Summary
It required strong leadership from top-to-bottom and from beginning-to-end to complete the Hoover Dam project. As such, the leaders of the 1920's and 1930's really inspired Kelly and I as we toured the Hoover Dam complex. We wondered if such strong and influential leaders exists today?
(continue reading on 7/24 at T4T)
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