the Right Angler
It’s Christmas time dear readers. So, I should be writing about the birth of Jesus and the love shared among family and friends during this wonderful season. Well, I was going to do that, and I’ll tell you it was going to be heartwarming and beautiful and my mom was going to love it. But you can forget that. Instead, I am forced to write about the Hoover Dam. That’s right. The Hoover Dam. And who do you have to blame for this shocking turn of events: the state of Massachusetts that’s who.
Let me explain. Last week I was in Boston doing business. Well, long story short, I made the mistake of picking up a newspaper. I read that with two days before the official start of winter, the state of Massachusetts is already out of snowplowing money. That’s right; two snowstorms and the snow removal budget is gone, kaput, finito. Now, in retrospect, at that point, I should have just hung my head in shame, put the paper down and walked away; but no, I didn’t, because another headline caught my eye. It turns out the Federal Government has placed a hold on more than $1 billion in matching money for new transportation projects in Massachusetts. Why? Because Massachusetts has not only failed to put enough money aside to pay for the enormous costs of fixing the crumbling bridges and roads in our state but they’ve failed to present an adequate plan for addressing the issue. With the cost of these repairs expected to be between $15-19 billion dollars over the next twenty years, and in the wake of the bridge collapse in Minnesota, the Feds are cracking down. So, we need a plan, and I’ll give you one guess where all this money is going to come from. It’s no wonder that Massachusetts is one of the few states that actually had a net annual population loss last year. The writing is on the wall my friends.
Speaking of walls, on the way home, with these two stories fresh in my mind, I sat in bumper to bumper traffic in the new $14 billion dollar tunnel. I couldn’t help but notice that the once neatly tiled walls were chiseled away, presumably to provide access to workers investigating the many cracks that were by the way still leaking. I could actually see water running down the rock behind the tiles. Now I know why the Feds are rejecting our requests for money for new transportation projects. Just look at our last big transportation project. The Big Dig cost $14 Billion dollars. It was supposed to cost $3 billion and ended a complete debacle of cost overruns, widespread corruption and shoddy construction. Well, it was enough to make me lose total faith in government. I just sat there feeling hopeless and helpless and then I remembered it: the Hoover Dam.
One of the greatest engineering feats in the history of the world, the Hoover Dam proved that talented individuals, private industry and limited government could work together to make great things happen. It all started when Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce under President Warren Harding, sat down with the Governors of the Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming to work out the best way to apportion the water of the Colorado River. The result was the Colorado River Compact signed on November 24, 1922. They then decided to build a dam to remove the silt and sediment out of the river. Six years later, the House and Senate approved the bill to construct the dam and the funds were appropriated by Herbert Hoover himself once he became President.
The contract to build the damn was awarded to a consortium of six companies called Six Companies, Inc. The chief executive was Frank Crowe who had invented many of the techniques that would be used to build the dam. It is important to note that a dam of this size and a project of this magnitude had never been done before. Many of the techniques used were being used for the first time.
So, how did they do? Well, they were given 7 years and $49 million dollars to build the dam. They finished in 5 and came in under budget. Before they even started building the actual dam, they had to build “Boulder City” to house the 21,000 workers, construct 7 miles of highway from “Boulder City” to the dam site, lay 32.7 miles of railroad from Las Vegas to Boulder City to the dam site, and install a 222 mile-long power transmission line from San Bernardino, CA to the dam site. They then had to divert the Colorado River through the mountains around the work site and build two cofferdams to protect the work site.
During the actual dam construction, they used 4.36 million cubic yards of concrete, 45 million pounds of reinforcement steel and 88 million pounds of plate steel and outlet pipes. They had to excavate over 5.5 million cubic yards of material.
The result was a 726 foot high, 660 foot thick dam that weighs 6.6 million tons. It provides a dependable water supply to over 1.4 million acres of land and more than 16 million people. It has virtually ended the possibility of the devastating floods that struck the lower reaches of the river before the dam. The power plant within the dam provides 4 billion kilo-watt hours of hydro-electric energy annually to California, Nevada and Arizona. 13,000 to 16,000 people travel across the dam every day, U.S. Route 93. The damn also created Lake Mead, the 5th busiest National Park and Recreation area. All that for $49, million dollars (approximately $646 million today). Not a bad deal.
So, during this Christmas season, when the shameful incompetence of government gets you down, just think of the Hoover Dam and remember, with the right people, it can work. Merry Christmas everyone.
