Dess L. ChappelearDESSL.pdf · Interview edited and published–2011 Oral History Program Bureau of...

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS

Dess L. Chappelear

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STATUS OF INTERVIEWS:OPEN FOR RESEARCH

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Interviews Conducted and Edited by:Brit Allan StoreySenior HistorianBureau of Reclamation

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Interviews conducted–1996Interview edited and published–2011

Oral History ProgramBureau of ReclamationDenver, Colorado

SUGGESTED CITATION:

CHAPPELEAR, DESS L. ORAL HISTORYINTERVIEW. Transcript of tape-recorded Bureau ofReclamation Oral History Interviews conducted byBrit Allan Storey, Senior Historian, Bureau ofReclamation, in Boulder City, Nevada. Edited byBrit Allan Storey. Repository for the record copy ofthe interview transcript is the National Archives andRecords Administration in College Park, Maryland.

Record copies of this transcript are printed on 20 lb.,100% cotton, archival quality paper. All other copies areprinted on normal duplicating paper.

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Oral history of Dess L. Chappelear

Table of Contents

Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Statement of Donation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Brief Chronology of Career . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii

Oral History Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Born in Southwestern Oklahoma in 1930 . . . . . . . 1“It really wasn’t the Depression that hurt us, it was .

. . that we weren’t getting any rain. So we . .

. managed pretty well through an occupationthat my father had. . . . he acquired a waterwell drilling machine that could go a couplehundred foot deep . . . he was drilling wellsin southwest Oklahoma for farmers. Whentheir well went dry during that period, whyhe was drilling water wells for a dollar afoot for the first hundred foot and a dollarand a half beyond that. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Went to Cameron Junior College in Lawton,Oklahoma. 1948 to 1950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Transferred to Oklahoma A&M in Stillwater . . . . 3Spent Four Years in the Air Force During the

Korean Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Finished a Civil Engineering Degree on the GI Bill

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Received His Degree in Civil Engineering in 1956

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Bureau of Reclamation History Program

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Chose to Work for Reclamation Rather than Boeing

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Started with Reclamation August 1, 1956 . . . . . . . 5Did Survey Training During the Summer of 1956

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Ran a Survey Crew at Fort Cobb Reservoir . . . . . 6Moved to the Hydrology Division in the Oklahoma

City Development Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Did Some Stream Gauging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Worked in the Lab During Construction of Fort

Cobb Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9C. O. (Spike) Crane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Asked to Transfer to Run the Lab at Foss Dam to

Calm Personality Conflicts in theConstruction Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Sent to Look for a Dam Site on the Canadian Riverfor the Canadian River Project . . . . . . . . . 11

Moved to Construction of Sanford Dam on theCanadian River Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Served as Assistant Project Engineer on SanfordDam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

“. . . one of the big problems we had with SanfordDam was we were in an oil and gas area andwe had pipelines running all over the place. So one of the first things I did was try andlocate all these pipelines that were going tobe in the reservoir area and try to get themrelocated out of the reservoir. . . .” . . . . . 13

“. . . one morning. I went out to the job site andhere was gas and moisture and stuff being

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shot two or three hundred foot up in the air. .. .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Experimenting with Explosive to Consolidate theFoundation of Sanford Dam . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Asked to Move to the Canadian River ProjectOffice in Amarillo Where He GatheredDesign Data for Reaches Two and Three ofthe Canadian River Project Office AqueductSystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Moved to Lubbock, Texas, to SuperviseConstruction of the Third Reach of theCanadian River Aqueduct . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Governor of Texas Called to Recommend Someoneto Be His Secretary in Lubbock . . . . . . . . 18

Joe D. Hall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Cen-Vi-Ro Reinforced Concrete Pipe . . . . . . . . . 20R. H. Fulton Company Won the Contract for Reach

Three of the Canadian River ProjectAqueduct And, out of Necessity, Ended upDeveloping New Ways of Laying thePipeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Spike Crane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28“. . . this has always been a problem with me and

the Bureau is that the higher you went withthe Bureau, the less fun the job was, and themore administrative and paperwork, andpersonnel things entered into the job. Wenever had dual career ladders like someorganizations where a good technician couldgo to the top doing what he did well. . . .”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

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People Who Worked the Pipeline Project out ofLubbock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Attended the Fourth Army Management School inSan Antonio, Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

While in Lubbock His Wife Attended Texas Techand Earned Her Degree in ElementaryEducation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Move to Washington, D.C. to Work in the Waterand Lands Division . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Floyd Dominy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36“. . . I wrote hundreds of letters the first year or two

that I was in the Washington office. . . .”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Worked for Morris Langley and Richard Shunick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Worked on Compiling the Colorado RiverDocuments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Worked in the Division of General Engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Liked Going to Reclamation’s Annual ProgramConference to Set the Program for the nextYear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Jimmy Carter and Reclamation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42“. . . Carter, he was wanting to shut down all of

Reclamation’s projects. . . . he did make mylife rather miserable. . . . and I got rather fedup with that and decided, “Well, if this isgoing to be such a hassle, maybe I . . . needto get back to a construction job.”” . . . . . 43

Dick Shunick Became Project Manager in Phoenixfor the Central Arizona Project . . . . . . . . 44

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Applied for and Selected as Assistant ProjectManager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

CAP Had a Lot of Things to Be Done . . . . . . . . . 46Served as Acting Project Director, but Did Not

Receive the Job When He Applied for it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Ed Hallenback Became Project Manager . . . . . . 46Given Line Responsibility to Supervise Several

Divisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Environmental Statements Had to Be Completed,

and the Aqueduct Had to Be Sized for theProject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Tucson Factions Take Positions on the CAP . . . . 48CAP Was Also Affected by Indian Water Rights in

the Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48Sizing the Salt Gila Pumping Plant . . . . . . . . . . . 49“. . . CAP was visualized that initially virtually all

the water would go to . . . the differentirrigation districts in the state, and then . . .we priced the farmers nearly out of thewater-taking business. And we had built alot of distribution systems that weren’tgoing to be utilized to the extent that wethought. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Central Arizona Project Association . . . . . . . . . . 51Central Arizona Water Conservation District

(CAWCD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52Served as Assistant Project Manager from 1977 to

1985 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53Bob Broadbent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54Planning and Building the Control System for CAP

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56“. . . it was pretty complicated. Ed Hallenback kept

a real tight rein on that thing. But some ofthe choices that had to be made dealt withthe system reliability. The final outcome ofit went to . . . primarily microwave for day-to-day operation, backup buried line. . . .”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

“. . . Andy Dolyniuk was disappointed that hewasn’t calling all the shots, but he reallycouldn’t, and I don’t think that heappreciated some of the planning problemsthat we got into. Some of the planningproblems that really required a lot of timeand were difficult to resolve was the floodcontrol for the Phoenix area. . . .” . . . . . . 58

Orme Dam and the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Control of the Salt and Verde Rivers . . . . . . . . . . 59Plan 6 for the Central Arizona Project, Including

Cliff Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60Steve Magnussen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60Developing Environmental Statements for the

Central Arizona Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61Dick Shunick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62“He was a good communicator. He didn’t have the

construction experience, but in dealing withthe political types and in dealing with thedifferent irrigation districts that we weretrying to deal with, he was a very goodcommunicator. I think that was his strong

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point. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63“. . . when it came to dealing with the press and

some of these other things, Shunick oftenleft that to me and so did Ed. I dealt withthe press a lot. I was on TV a lot. . . .” . . 63

“. . . so much of the CAP is now Indian water, theFederal Government’s really gotten itselfinvolved in something that’s going to bevery expensive in the long haul. . . .” . . . . 65

“. . . Indians were going through BIA [Bureau ofIndian Affairs] and the Secretary of theInterior . . . probably conducted at a muchhigher level than here. But therepercussions were coming back to us intrying to deal with the sizing of the systemand its operation. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Regional Directors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67Why He Decided to Retire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69Activities since Retirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69Encounters with James Watt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72Why He Was Interested in Studying Civil

Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74Sent to Fort Cobb Reservoir to Run a Survey Crew

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76Sent to Earth and Concrete School by Reclamation

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77“. . . the Bureau of Reclamation had very definite

ideas about quality control in both of theseareas and had manuals associated with theconcrete work and the earth embankmentwork, and they wanted to make sure that

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everyone that was working on Bureau workwas well indoctrinated and knowledgeablewith these manuals and what the Bureauexpected out of them. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

“We had a number of different streams in southwestOklahoma that we were looking at. . . .trying to size dams . . . Much of that workwas related to municipal and industrialwater supplies which the Bureau ofReclamation was just getting into at thattime . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

“. . . turn of the century on the Salt River Project. When they started out with the spillwaysthere on some of the dams that they builtafter they built Roosevelt Dam, all thosespillways are really inadequate underpresent-day hydrology techniques. . . .” . 83

Determining the Cement Mix to Use at Fort CobbDam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

“If it just stands up there and doesn’t move, youknow you’re going to have a mix that peoplecan’t work with in getting it in the formsatisfactorily and getting it consolidated. . ..” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

“. . . we realized that by inducing air entrainingagents in concrete we could increase thedurability of the concrete and it would betterbe able to go through freeze-thaw cycles. . ..” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

“. . . with all these mixes we took many, manyconcrete cylinders for testing purposes, and

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we would break these cylinders in sevendays and twenty-eight days, and ninety daysso that we could estimate what the strengthof that concrete was. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Testing Embankment Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95The Lab at Fort Cobb Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99Determining Permeability of the Embankment

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101“. . . the regional office was not all that closely

associated with the construction office, andit seemed like we had a lot of rapport goingon between the field construction officesand the Engineering and Research Centerthat didn’t necessarily have a great deal todo with the regional office . . .” . . . . . . . 103

Barney Bellport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105Harold Arthur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106Teton Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108Fontanelle Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108Transferred to Foss Dam to Head the Lab . . . . . 111An Incident with One of the Young Engineers

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112Looking for a Sound Bottom on the Canadian River

in 1959/1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114Moved to Borger, Texas, to Work on Sanford Dam

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116Spike Crane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121“I got a lot of good treatment from a lot of good

people. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122Moving from Lubbock, Texas, to Washington, D.C.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

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“. . . it was really an educational thing that I thinkhelped me a lot. It was good to see how theBureau of Reclamation operated at that leveland sort of a hard thing to put your fingeron, but politics enters into things. . . .”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

“. . . one of the things about the Bureau thatconcerned me . . . was we had all theseprojects authorized and the funding wasnever what it should be in relation to thenumber of projects that we had going. . . .”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Responsibilities of the Various Offices . . . . . . . 128“You know, you have a limited capability on these

projects in that you’ve got a lot ofprerequisites that you had to get out of theway . . . acquisition of land . . . preparationof environmental impact statements . . .acquiring of design data and getting this tothe E&R Center. So you had all theseprerequisites that had to be got out of theway before you could proceed with anyconstruction . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

“That was why we would have these programconferences annually and try to determinewhat these capabilities were. . . .” . . . . . 130

Licensed Engineer in Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131Effects of Environmental Laws and Regulations on

Reclamation Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133The Plan 6 Planning Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136Plan 6 Was Designed to provide Storage for the

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Central Arizona Project and Flood Controlfor Phoenix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Bad Effects of Not Building Cliff Dam . . . . . . . 137“. . . there’s some talk here in the Phoenix area of

building a third runway at Sky HarborAirport . . . going to have to extend almostout into the Salt River area. . . . they’veforgotten all about our studies saying thatthey needed that other dam on the VerdeRiver to provide flood control to keep thatrunway from damage should there beflooding. So it’s going to be interesting tosee how all that works out. . . .” . . . . . . . 138

“I really was concerned about some of thearchaeological studies that were done. . . . and we were doing similar-type studies overand over and over and not finding anythingin my mind that I felt was very significant. .. . It just looked like to me that thearchaeological community was doing theirvery best to build little empires and spend alot of money on these types of studies andreally was bleeding the Federal Governmentto accomplish this end. ” . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Roy Boyd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142Morris Langley and Richard Shunick . . . . . . . . 142Why Similar Sounding Offices Were Found in the

Project, Region, and Washington, D.C.,Offices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Became Chief of the Contract and RepaymentsBranch in the Division of Land and Water

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145Repayment Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145How Richard Shunick and Chappelear Split the

Responsibilities in the Office . . . . . . . . . 150How Ed Hallenback and Chappelear Split up the

Responsibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150Liked Working for Reclamation . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

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Statement of Donation

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Brief Chronology of Career

1930–Born on a dryland farm in southwestern Oklahoma

1948–Graduated from high school in Mountain View,Oklahoma

1948-1950–Attended Cameron Junior College in Lawton,Oklahoma

1950-1954-Served in the U.S. Air Force during the KoreanConflict

1954-1956–Attended Oklahoma A&M in Stillwater wherehe received a degree in civil engineering

1956–Attended survey camp near Buena Vista, Colorado,in the summer

1956–Went to work for Reclamation on August 1, at FortCobb running levels on a survey crew

1956–Moved to Oklahoma City and went to work in theHydrology Division in the Oklahoma CityDevelopment Office where he worked on theNorman Project and Fort Cobb Dam and Reservoirand then moved to the lab during construction at FortCobb

1958–Asked to move to Foss Dam

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1960–Sent to do preliminary studies during the winter for adam location for the Canadian River Project. Subsequently, as work at Foss Dam wound down, hemoved to Borger, Texas, to the Sanford Damconstruction site as the assistant project engineerduring construction.

1962-1963–Moved into Amarillo to the Canadian RiverProject Office where he gathered design data for thesecond and third reaches of the Canadian RiverProject Aqueduct System

1964–moved to Lubbock, Texas, to set up the constructionoffice for the last reach of the aqueduct

c. 1966–Attended the Fourth Army management school inSan Antonio.

1968- c.1970–Moved to Washington, D.C., to the Division ofLand and Water

c. 1970-1973–Chief of the Contract and Repayments Branchin the Division of General Engineering.

1973-1977–Chief of the Division of General Engineering inWashington, D.C.

1977-1985–Moved to Phoenix as assistant project managerfor construction of the Central Arizona Project

1985–Retired from Reclamation

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Introduction

In 1988, Reclamation began to create a historyprogram. While headquartered in Denver, the historyprogram was developed as a bureau-wide program.

One component of Reclamation’s history program isits oral history activity. The primary objectives ofReclamation’s oral history activities are: preservation ofhistorical data not normally available through Reclamationrecords (supplementing already available data on the wholerange of Reclamation’s history); making the preserved dataavailable to researchers inside and outside Reclamation.

The senior historian of the Bureau of Reclamationdeveloped and directs the oral history program. Questions,comments, and suggestions may be addressed to the seniorhistorian.

Brit Allan StoreySenior Historian

Land Resources Office (84-53000)Policy and AdministrationBureau of ReclamationP. O. Box 25007Denver, Colorado 80225-0007(303) 445-2918FAX: (720) 544-0639E-mail: [email protected]

For additional information about Reclamation’s

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history program see:www.usbr.gov/history

1


Oral History InterviewsDess L. Chappelear

Storey: This is Brit Allan Storey, senior historian ofthe Bureau of Reclamation, interviewing DessL. Chappelear, a retiree from the Bureau ofReclamation, and former assistant projectmanager in the Arizona Projects Office. I’minterviewing Mr. Chappelear at his home inSun City West[, Arizona,] on September the3rd, 1996, at about eight o’clock in themorning. This is tape one.

Mr. Chappelear, I’d like to ask youwhere you were born and raised and educatedand how you ended up at the Bureau ofReclamation.

Born in Southwestern Oklahoma in 1930

Chappelear: I was born in the northwest bedroom of adryland farmhouse in southwest Oklahoma. Iwas born in 1930. I spent my early days onthis farm, and as you may recall, this wasDepression days, but even worse than that, itwas Dust Bowl days. And I guess it was someof that Dust Bowl thing that got me interestedin water. I can remember as a child about fouror five years old, setting on the porch on thenorth side of this old farmhouse and seeing acloud approaching from the North. And, boy,

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I thought this was wonderful because myfather had been talking about how we reallyneeded a rain and that sort of thing, and I wastickled because I could see this cloud comingup and I thought it was going to rain. But itturned out that this wasn’t a cloud at all, thiswas some blowing dust and it wasapproaching rapidly and throwing up a bankthere two or three thousand foot high. Then injust a little bit you couldn’t see a hundredyards. So I recall the Dust Bowl days as avery small child.

“It really wasn’t the Depression that hurt us, itwas . . . that we weren’t getting any rain. So we . .. managed pretty well through an occupation thatmy father had. . . . he acquired a water well drilling

machine that could go a couple hundred footdeep . . . he was drilling wells in southwest

Oklahoma for farmers. When their well went dryduring that period, why he was drilling water wellsfor a dollar a foot for the first hundred foot and a

dollar and a half beyond that. . . .”

It really wasn’t the Depression thathurt us, it was really the fact that we weren’tgetting any rain. So we had a hard timemanaging there in the thirties, and wemanaged pretty well through an occupationthat my father had. When he was younger, heworked in a shallow oil well field there

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located between Mountain View and Gotebo,Oklahoma, and he came away from that withthe knowledge on how to drill wells. So heacquired a water well drilling machine thatcould go a couple hundred foot deep, therewas a whole set of cable tools, and so early onhe was drilling wells in southwest Oklahomafor farmers. When their well went dry duringthat period, why he was drilling water wellsfor a dollar a foot for the first hundred footand a dollar and a half beyond that.

Went to Cameron Junior College in Lawton,Oklahoma. 1948 to 1950

So as a kid, I followed him around andsaw the value of water, and I think maybethat’s what influenced me to go with theBureau of Reclamation. I went on and Ifinished high school there at Mountain View,and from there I went to a little junior collegecalled Cameron located at Lawton, Oklahoma. I spent two years there in ‘48-‘49 and then‘49-‘50.

Transferred to Oklahoma A&M in Stillwater

And from there why I transferred up toStillwater, Oklahoma, and was going to go toOklahoma A&M.

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Spent Four Years in the Air Force During theKorean Conflict

About that time along came the Korean thing,and my education was discontinued for fouryears there and I spent time in the Air Force.

Finished a Civil Engineering Degree on the GI Bill

I went back to school on the GI Bill followingmy experience in the Air Force, and I wentright straight through summer sessions and alland got a degree in civil engineering fromOklahoma A&M. About that time they werechanging the name to Oklahoma StateUniversity.

Received His Degree in Civil Engineering in 1956

I was really concerned about goingback to school after getting out of the serviceand whether I could make it in engineering,because I’d already had all of my higher mathin my first two and a half years. I took a lot ofaptitude tests, IQ tests, and they all saidyou’re right on course to make it in civilengineering. After I went back I was a lotmore serious about going to school than in myfirst two and a half years. Also, I wasmarried, had a wife and some responsibilities,so I cut it right on down the road at a high run

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and got my degree in August of ‘56.

Chose to Work for Reclamation Rather thanBoeing

At that time I had to make somechoices as to who I was going to work for. Ihad three different job offers at the time, andone of them I considered very seriouslybesides the Bureau of Reclamation. Then Iwas going to work for Boeing in Wichita. While I was in the service, part of the stuffthat I did in there was dealing with hydraulicsystems on aircraft, and I was familiar withjust about all the hydraulic systems oneverything that the Air Force flew at that time,and one of them being the B-47, which was aBoeing aircraft. I don’t know, they sent me, Iguess, three different telegrams trying to getme to go to work for them, and they weremaking a lot better job offer than I was gettingfrom the Bureau of Reclamation, but theBureau of Reclamation had some appeal tome, and so I chose to go that way.

Started with Reclamation August 1, 1956

I started out with the Bureau ofReclamation. I was supposed to go to theOklahoma City Development Office, and Iwent to work for the Bureau of Reclamation

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on August the 1st, 1956. But my first thirtydays with the Bureau like to kill me.

Did Survey Training During the Summer of 1956

I had put off getting some of my surveytraining until the summer of 1956 and I wentto a survey camp located up in Colorado, andit was located out of Buena Vista. We wereworking at pretty high altitudes, and I couldremember when we started out up there, wewere sleeping in tents, and it was just cold asheck at night. I remember sleeping on this oldArmy cot, and I had my wool socks on andmy wool underwear on, and waking up in themorning cold. It was so darn rough.

Ran a Survey Crew at Fort Cobb Reservoir

Anyway, I spent all this time up there where itwas nice and cool, came down and was givena survey crew to run around Fort CobbReservoir. We were running a bunch of levelsaround there.

Storey: Around which reservoir?

Chappelear: Around Fort Cobb.

Storey: Fort Cobb?

7


Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: In Colorado?

Chappelear: No, no. This is in Oklahoma.

Storey: Oh, I’m sorry. I missed something.

Chappelear: I was supposed to go to work for theOklahoma City Development Office, but theydidn’t let me move into Oklahoma City, butthey did put me out in the field. We werechecking some water levels in wells aroundwhat was going to be Fort Cobb Reservoir. The dam wasn’t built at the time. In the firstthirty days why it broke 100 every day and Ithought they were going to kill me there withthat switch in climate. So I ran some levelsaround the reservoir area to some differentwells. We were just checking elevations inwells.

Moved to the Hydrology Division in the OklahomaCity Development Office

Then after that, why I moved toOklahoma City and went to work in theHydrology Division in the Oklahoma CityDevelopment Office. Had some real nicepeople there, some people that I worked forthat I thought were really great. Marley

8

1. Note that in the text of these interviews, as opposed toheadings, information in parentheses, ( ), is actually on the tape. Information in brackets, [ ], has been added to the tape either by theeditor to clarify meaning or at the request of the interviewee in order tocorrect, enlarge, or clarify the interview as it was originally spoken. Words have sometimes been struck out by editor or interviewee inorder to clarify meaning or eliminate repetition. In the case ofstrikeouts, that material has been printed at 50% density to aid inreading the interviews but assuring that the struckout material isreadable.

The transcriber and editor also have removed some extraneouswords such as false starts and repetitions without indicating theirremoval. The meaning of the interview has not been changed by thisediting.


Burger [phonetic]1 was head of thisHydrology Unit. At that time we werestudying the potential for a number ofdifferent reservoirs in Oklahoma, and some ofthose were later built. One was the NormanProject Dam there, and the Fort Cobb Damand Reservoir was being studied, and also aFoss Dam in the western part of the state. Then there were some other jobs that welooked at. So we had all this hydrology workand we were trying to size dams and checkflows on reservoirs and see what could bedone at some of these different locations.

Did Some Stream Gauging

I had one day out of the office therewhile I worked in this Hydrology Divisionthat I really enjoyed. They put me out

9


gauging streams in different locations insouthwest Oklahoma. One of them that I didsome gauging on was this Fort CobbReservoir site, a little old stream there. So Idid get out of the office and did enjoy that alittle bit, but that wasn’t a job that I stayedwith for very long, about a year, and then theygot construction on Fort Cobb Dam underway.

Worked in the Lab During Construction of FortCobb Dam

I moved down to Fort Cobb and Istarted work in the lab there, earth lab, and wewere trying to locate embankment materialsfor building Fort Cobb Dam, and theneventually we got into the concrete work andmaking concrete mixes. I stayed down therefor a couple years, I guess.

C. O. (Spike) Crane

About in ‘58, I guess it was, I wasworking on the Fort Cobb Dam, I wasworking for C .O. Crane [phonetic], “Spike”Crane. Spike was a real nice guy, a fellowthat I really enjoyed working with. He calledthe wife and I into the office and wanted totalk to us. She had just gotten on with theBureau of Reclamation and she was working

10

2. This is on the Washita Basin Project. The dam is in the areaof Clinton, Oklahoma.


in the payroll section.

Asked to Transfer to Run the Lab at Foss Dam toCalm Personality Conflicts in the Construction

Office

So C. O. said, “I’d like for you to transfer upto Foss Dam.”2 They’d had somedisagreements up there between the guy thatwas running the lab and the constructionengineer, and that old boy says, “Well, if youbring Chappelear up here,” he says, “I’ll workfor him, but I’m not going to work under–”this fellow that was the construction engineer. So Spike really put me on the spot there andasked me to go up there and take charge ofthat lab, which I did.

Me and this fellow got along real greatand I didn’t have any trouble with the otherpeople, too. They were sort of a dividedhouse up there, and I kind of walked the fenceall the time I was up there on Foss Dam.

Storey: What kinds of things were they disagreeingabout, do you remember?

Chappelear: Mostly I think it was personality conflicts andjust didn’t get along. Not conflicts as far as

11


what should be done or how to do it, but justclashes of personalities. I guess those thingshappen.

Sent to Look for a Dam Site on the Canadian Riverfor the Canadian River Project

[I] worked along there on Foss Dam,we were getting close to completion on it, andanother dam was being considered, and thiswas on the Canadian River Project. About1960 I spent a miserable winter. They sent meout to this potential dam site to do somedegradation studies downstream to see if wecould find some control on the river, such assome hard rock or something like that. I wentout there with one other fellow, a driller, hisname was Marvin Cash. Marvin and I wentout there and we jetted down a lot of holesacross the [Canadian] Colorado River bottomtrying to find some controls, and all we everfound was a deep sandy bottom that wentdown several hundred feet.

Storey: You said the Colorado River?

Chappelear: No, the Canadian River. I switched rivers onyou there. Sorry. But this was on theCanadian River and associated with theCanadian River Project.

12

3. Sanford Dam in just north of Amarillo, Texas, near Borger.


Moved to Construction of Sanford Dam on theCanadian River Project

So later we got the Canadian River Projectunder way with the construction of SanfordDam. I made a move from Clinton,Oklahoma, to the border of Texas.3

Storey: How did that move come about?

Served as Assistant Project Engineer on SanfordDam

Chappelear: Well, my work there on Foss Dam was justabout over with and we were about tocomplete Foss Dam. Spike Crane was sentout to Amarillo, Texas, under Leon Hill, andSpike was starting to give me some paybackfor having me make that one move, I think. So Spike wanted me out there, and he broughta fellow in from California, Phil Kinsley, whowas going to be the construction engineer onthe dam, and he brought me in as Phil’sassistant. So I was the number-two guy thereon the construction of that dam, but the headguy was Spike Crane, he was the projectmanager.

Storey: So you were assistant construction engineerfor the project?

13


Chappelear: No, for Sanford Dam, not the project.

Storey: For Sanford Dam?

“. . . one of the big problems we had with SanfordDam was we were in an oil and gas area and wehad pipelines running all over the place. So one

of the first things I did was try and locate all thesepipelines that were going to be in the reservoir

area and try to get them relocated out of thereservoir. . . .”

Chappelear: Right. I worked there in that area for a coupleof years, and one of the big problems we hadwith Sanford Dam was we were in an oil andgas area and we had pipelines running all overthe place. So one of the first things I did wastry and locate all these pipelines that weregoing to be in the reservoir area and try to getthem relocated out of the reservoir. We weretrying to do that as inexpensively as we could,of course. Then also we had a couple of wellsthat were in the reservoir area, and one ofthose we relocated on the downstream slopeof Sanford Dam and did some directionaldrilling so that this well was still operational,which gets me to the story that scared the heckout of me one morning.

“. . . one morning. I went out to the job site andhere was gas and moisture and stuff being shot

14


two or three hundred foot up in the air. . . .”

I went out to the job site and here wasgas and moisture and stuff being shot two orthree hundred foot up in the air. Thecontractor was placing some waste materialon the downstream toe of the dam and he wasusing some scraper units. Everybody hadbeen in a nice traffic flow pattern except thisone old boy. This well had been relocated andthere was nothing there but what they call aChristmas tree, which was all the valves andstuff sticking up on it, and he made a wrongturn and broke the Christmas tree off from thiswell. He was one really lucky guy that hedidn’t get fried to a crisp. As soon as he hit it,he realized what he had done, he turned hisengine off on his scraper, and it didn’t catchon fire. So they were able to get in there andcap that off without too much of a problem,except there was a lot of gas lost in theprocess of getting it done, but we didn’t havea fire. That was one thing associated with allthose relocations there.

So that was one of the preliminarythings that I did prior to starting construction. Really getting into construction of the damwas the relocation of these pipelines, and thisother followed after we were in construction.

15


Storey: Before we go on, let’s talk a little more aboutthis relocated well. Were there, for instance,any claims against the government, first of all,for downtime on the well, second of all, forloss of gas as a result of the accident, thosekinds of things?

Chappelear: There was certainly a claim against thecontractor for the loss of gas, and I think itwas a pretty substantial sum. We realizedearly on that we were going to have to makethis well relocation and we tried to get thatgoing while the well was still productive, andso we had very little downtime.

Storey: So it was planned so that we didn’t have to dothat kind of reimbursement?

Chappelear: Well, we reduced it as much as possible. Idon’t think there was hardly any.

Experimenting with Explosive to Consolidate theFoundation of Sanford Dam

Another fun thing that I did on theSanford Dam site was for practice gettingstarted on construction was, we had all thesesmart people up there in the Engineering andResearch Center in Denver and we weretrying to cut the cost of building SanfordDam. We hadn’t been able to find a good

16


foundation for it from those earlier studies,but they had remembered somewhere over inPakistan or something someone was buildinga dam and they had been able to reduce thecutoff trench size by getting in there andplacing explosives in the foundation area andjust shaking it a little bit and consolidating thesands. Well, we had all these fine sands underthe Sanford Dam site, and I think it wasBarney Bellport at the time that was saying,“Well, hell, if they can do it over there, wecan surely do it in the United States.”

So it was part of my job to go out thereand plant a lot of different explosive patternswith different times of detonation on them andtry and shake down this foundation and see ifwe could consolidate it. So we were going toremove and have a smaller cutoff trench if wecould do this. But, unfortunately, we weren’table to accomplish this to anybody’ssatisfaction. We could get someconsolidation, but it wasn’t a significantamount.

So really after doing some of theseshots, I can remember it sort of looked like aWorld War II scene, we’d have the waterbubbling up and the gas coming out of theground and smoke and whatnot. But it reallydidn’t accomplish anything.

17


Storey: How did you determine whether or not youhad gotten adequate consolidation?

Chappelear: In-place density tests and that sort of thing. Itwas sort of a fun thing, but it didn’t work.

Asked to Move to the Canadian River ProjectOffice in Amarillo Where He Gathered Design Datafor Reaches Two and Three of the Canadian River

Project Office Aqueduct System

As the construction was going alongpretty good there on the dam and I’d beenthere a couple of years, I was asked to movedown to Amarillo and get in the project officethere, the Canadian River Project Office. Ispent about a year there, I guess from about‘62 to ‘63, about ‘62, thereabouts. I was inthe Canadian River Project Office, and I wasgathering design data and sending it in for theCanadian River Project Aqueduct System. We had three long reaches of aqueduct thatwe completed in three different sections. Onewas trying to get the water from Sanford Dam,what was later known as Meredith Lake, downto Amarillo, and then the second section wasfrom Amarillo down to Lubbock, Texas. Iwas gathering up this design data andsubmitting it to the E&R Center for thesecond and third reaches of the aqueduct.

18


Storey: Who asked you to move?

Moved to Lubbock, Texas, to SuperviseConstruction of the Third Reach of the Canadian

River Aqueduct

Chappelear: Spike did, again. Then finally in 1964, I wasasked to move again. We didn’t have anoffice set up at Lubbock and we still hadabout a hundred and forty miles of aqueduct tobuild with four pumping plants and a lot ofregulating tanks and surge tanks associatedwith it. So in ‘64, I moved to Lubbock,Texas, and was put in charge of that lastsection of aqueduct. This was really the firstbig break that I’d had with the Bureau ofReclamation in having an office of my own. Of course, I was still under Spike and theproject office, but I finally got an office of myown in ‘64, and stayed there in the Lubbockarea for four years building this hundred andforty miles of aqueduct that delivered water toseven different communities in the TexasPanhandle.

Governor of Texas Called to RecommendSomeone to Be His Secretary in Lubbock

Had another funny thing, it’s funnynow, it wasn’t funny when it occurred. I had afun thing happen to me when I went down

19


there to set up that office in ‘64. I wasn’t verypolitically active, more just the straightengineering type, and one morning I got aphone call from a guy named Preston Smith,and Preston Smith wanted to talk to me. Rightoff I couldn’t recall who Preston Smith was,but he was the governor of the state of Texas. (laughter) But I don’t know, it didn’t strikeme that morning. They didn’t say it was thegovernor when they called and put me onalert. So I had this phone call, and he couldn’ttalk to me, and so they cut me off and then itcame to me who Preston Smith was that waswanting to talk to me. And old Preston wascalling me and wanting to recommend a ladyto be my secretary when I set up this office atLubbock.

Of course, I wasn’t so naive that Ididn’t recognize that I shouldn’t hire RuthBroadhurst as my secretary, and I hired herand she turned out to be really great. She wasa real intelligent woman. She knew an awfullot about the water business in Texas and sheturned out to be quite an asset. I was reallytaken aback that here I’d got a phone call fromthe governor of the state of Texas and I didn’trealize immediately who he was. He was justanother one of the Smith boys, you know. (laughter)

20


Storey: Speaking of people connected with Sanford,for instance, and construction of the aqueductsystem, I think there was one Joe D. Hallworking on that project.

Joe D. Hall

Chappelear: Yes. When I first met Mr. Hall, he wasworking in a pipe plant located at Plainview,Texas.

Storey: Reinforced concrete pipe plant, I think.

Cen-Vi-Ro Reinforced Concrete Pipe

Chappelear: Right. Cen-Vi-Ro of Texas was the name ofthe plant or the name of the company. Theyput that tag on it to identify it as a separatelittle unit, I think, but it was Cen-Vi-Ro ofTexas. And Joe was making pipe there in thisPlainview plant. He was making pipe for thejob that I had there at Lubbock. They made alot of the pipe for us.

Storey: But he was Reclamation’s inspector, wasn’the?

Chappelear: Yes, he was an inspector at that pipe plant,yes.

Storey: He didn’t work for the company.

21


Chappelear: He didn’t work for them, he was a Bureauemployee.

Storey: Right.

Chappelear: He was overseeing the inspection of the pipethat was coming to this job that I had. Andthat gets into a rather long-winded story. Herethe manufacturers of this pipe were having itinspected by these Bureau of Reclamationemployees, and they were inspecting it thereat Plainview, and then they were shipping itsouth. We were getting this pipe and we werealso–I had people out there inspecting the pipeon the ground, and we were rejecting some ofthis pipe that had previously been passed. Wegot into a big hubbub over, well, where wasthe pipe inspected. Well, there was noquestion in my mind where the pipe wasinspected and accepted, it was accepted justprior to laying. If it wasn’t a good joint ofpipe, well, we weren’t going to lay it. So wegot into a big lawsuit with Cen-Vi-Ro ofTexas because we were rejecting considerablymore pipe than was being rejected at the pipeplant.

That lawsuit came back to haunt memany years later. After I finished this jobthere at Lubbock, Texas, I made a move to theWashington, D.C., office. I’d been up there

22


several years and I got a phone call fromSpike Crane and he says, “Hey, we’re going tobe having some hearings on this Cen-Vi-Ropipe thing. We’d like to have you testify.” And he gave me the name of this lawyer thatwas going to be taking the testimony inWashington.

END SIDE 1, TAPE 1. SEPTEMBER 3, 1996.BEGIN SIDE 2, TAPE 1. SEPTEMBER 3, 1996.

Storey: You were saying you had been off the job forthree or four years.

Chappelear: Yeah, away from the Lubbock, Texas, area forthree or four years when this testimony wasneeded. This lawyer assured me that, “Allthat you have to do is show up and say thatyou wrote and signed these memorandumrejecting this pipe that was built by Cen-Vi-Ro of Texas and your reasons for doing so.” Really, all I had to do is identify that this wasmy signature and I’d written thesememorandums in regards to it–well, that’swhat he told me I was going to have to do.

So I showed up that morning andthought, “Well, that’s all there’s going to be tothis. I’m going to be on the stand five or tenminutes and then I’ll be off and gone.” But itdidn’t work out that way. I turned out to be

23


the first person for the Bureau of Reclamationto testify before this group and they had me onfor four hours instead of ten minutes andreally had me on the spot. But my testimonyturned out pretty doggone good, and so I waspleased with it once it made the record book. But that was an interesting thing associatedwith Cen-Vi-Ro of Texas.

Storey: Was this in front of a group that wasarbitrating or was this a deposition?

Chappelear: This was really an arbitration, I think, of thisthing, and they had their lawyers and we hadour lawyers and it was really more of adeposition than cross-examination on my part. So they went on to settle the thing. I’ve gotseveral pages of questions and answers andthe settlement of it.

Storey: Could you tell me how to spell Cen-Vi-Ro?

Chappelear: C-E-N, dash, V-I, dash, R-O. Cen-Vi-Rostands for centrifugal spinning of the pipe. They had forms where they introduced theconcrete into these pipes, or forms, which heldwhatever reinforcement was needed, and thecentrifugal force, they spun the pipe as it wasbeing made. They would shoot the concretein there and it would level itself out bycentrifugal force. Then they had the vibrators

24


on this, and that’s what the “V-I” stands for,and all during this process it was rotating.

Storey: Cen-Vi-Ro.

Chappelear: Cen-Vi-Ro, yeah. That was a pipemanufacturing process.

Storey: Was this a new technique for Reclamation, doyou know?

Chappelear: Well, I don’t think that it was a new techniquefor Reclamation, because Reclamation nevermade any pipe, per se. But there were otherprojects that had used similar manufacturingprocesses.

Storey: Interesting. We were starting to talk about JoeHall, though.

Chappelear: Joe was a very ambitious young man and agood speaker and, I think, a good engineer. He went on to do quite well with the Bureauof Reclamation. He wound up being aregional director, as you’re aware. I alwaysfound Joe to be an interesting character and avery likeable guy.

Storey: What else did you do while you were inLubbock? What kinds of things were goingon?

25


R. H. Fulton Company Won the Contract for ReachThree of the Canadian River Project Aqueduct

And, out of Necessity, Ended up Developing NewWays of Laying the Pipeline

Chappelear: Well, the contract to lay the hundred and fortymiles of pipe went to an R. H. Fulton. R. H.Fulton Construction Company was one thatwas started with this little boy that hadprobably three or four trucks following WorldWar II, and he just built hisself into a prettygood construction company. But when he bidthis pipeline job, he sort of got in over hishead. He really saw immediately, because ofthe materials that had to be excavated there,we had a lot of caliche-type materials, andthey were difficult to excavate.

Storey: Very hard, consolidated.

Chappelear: Yes, they were hard materials. And for him toexcavate and lay this pipe, and bid the pipe bythe methods that were put in thespecifications, he saw immediately that hewas going to lose a great deal of money andthat he wasn’t going to be able to get the jobdone without going broke. So we decided towork with him on trying to come up with adifferent bedding method on bedding thispipe. He was able to come up with aexcavation machine that would form in the

26

4. D. L. Chappelear, M. ASCE, and E. L. Gloyna, A.M. ASCE,“Innovations in the Laying and Bedding of Pipe,” Civil Engineering:The Magazine of Engineered Construction, 37, No. 12 (December1967), 57-60.


bottom of the trench a circular section inwhich to bed the pipe. So with this trenchingmachine, he was able to practically excavatethe bottom of the trench to the line and gradethat we needed to do.

Then to lay the pipe, we came up withlaying the pipe on little sand pads at each endof the pipe and then pouring a little mortarbedding around the pipe so that each piece ofpipe was supported by this thin layer ofmortar bedding. We worked with thecontractor to come up with this concept, and itwas one that speeded up the work a great deal,got away from conventional Bureau ofReclamation pipe bedding methods, and wasvery innovative. It was a very unusual way ofbedding pipe.

I worked with a fellow by the name ofEmmett Gloyna, who was located in ourproject office, and he and I wrote a paper onthis method of laying pipe. Later I made a tripto New York City to deliver a paper before theAmerican Society of Civil Engineers on thisbedding method, and we got a write-up4 that Ican show you here on this innovative method.

27


So that was one thing that I did down therethat was interesting and a little bit different. Got a big kick out of that. And the contractorwent on to make money, and we got the pipelaid, and they’ve never had any trouble with it.

Storey: Tell me a little more about this, though,because one of the things that I’m particularlyinterested in is the relationship of the variousoffices in Reclamation to one another and whowas responsible for what. Now, I presumeyour Lubbock office was a field constructionoffice.

Chappelear: Yes, that’s correct.

Storey: And I also presume, I don’t know whethercorrectly, that the Denver office, the E&RCenter, whatever it was called at that time,wrote the specs for laying the pipeline.

Chappelear: That’s right.

Storey: So the specs were being changed. Who waschanging them?

Chappelear: Well, certainly we weren’t doing it in the fieldwithout the concurrence of the Engineeringand Research Center. So we laid some of thison an experimental basis, and certainly we hadtheir representatives come down to take a look

28


at it and that sort of thing, and then theyapproved it. And so we went on from there todo this.

Storey: Who would you have been working with? Doyou happen to remember?

Chappelear: I want to say Groseclose, but that’s not right.

Storey: Bill Groseclose.

Chappelear: Yeah. I don’t know who came down there. Ican’t recall who it was.

Storey: Now, how would this have worked? Forinstance, if you were a field constructionoffice, you worked for the project office andthe project office worked for the chiefengineer at that time.

Chappelear: Right. Sure.

Storey: Okay, so you would have gone through theproject office to the chief engineer’s office?

Chappelear: Oh, yes. Spike made the contacts and had thepeople come and look at it, yeah.

Spike Crane

Storey: Tell me more about Mr. Crane. What was he

29


like as a supervisor?

Chappelear: Well, I think he was very good. He wouldgive you some latitudes, but he’d give yousome overview, too. He was about as nice aman that I’ve ever worked for. I reallythought a lot of him, because, well, for me, hegave me a lot of opportunity and I appreciatedthat. But I think that he was a very fair,honest man.

Storey: What was his management style?

Chappelear: Well, he would, I think, give you a job and tellyou to go do it, and then he came down andtook a look-see every once in a while to seethat you were doing it in the proper manner. Iknow that he put me down there, and I’m surethat it took a lot of I don’t know what on hispart, intestinal fortitude to put me down thereand put me in charge of this job at Lubbock. But he did come to Lubbock often and visitwith the contractor and with myself.

Storey: How many people would have been in theLubbock office?

Chappelear: We didn’t have too many. We had twenty orthirty people, probably.

Storey: So it was, you know, a medium-sized

30


supervisory position for you.

Chappelear: Yeah.

Storey: What kinds of adjustments did you notice thatyou had to make moving into a supervisoryposition like that?

“. . . this has always been a problem with me andthe Bureau is that the higher you went with theBureau, the less fun the job was, and the moreadministrative and paperwork, and personnel

things entered into the job. We never had dualcareer ladders like some organizations where a

good technician could go to the top doing what hedid well. . . .”

Chappelear: Well, this has always been a problem with meand the Bureau is that the higher you wentwith the Bureau, the less fun the job was, andthe more administrative and paperwork, andpersonnel things entered into the job. Wenever had dual career ladders like someorganizations where a good technician couldgo to the top doing what he did well. Youalways got into this business of dealing withpeople more. I guess that’s the main thingthat I noticed, got more into management andsupervisory things and less and less intoengineering and engineering works.

31


Storey: When did you feel that you were beginning toleave behind your engineering specialization? Was it at Lubbock or was it before Lubbock?

Chappelear: Well, I think it came rather gradual. Maybe alittle when I was working on Sanford Dam,got more into managerial things and handlingpeople then. Maybe even before that when Ifirst was put in charge of the lab at Foss Dam,I got more into management things anddealing with people. Of course, before thatthere was just me and what I could do andwhat I was doing.

Storey: At Foss how many people would you havebeen supervising?

Chappelear: Oh, ten or less.

Storey: Um-hmm. And then you moved to the projectoffice in Amarillo. Was it co-located with theregional office or did they have a separatelocation?

Chappelear: Well, no, I moved from there to Borger,Texas, at Sanford Dam as the assistant there.

Storey: Then from Sanford to the Canadian RiverProject Office.

Chappelear: Yes. Well, there I was just sort of doing an

32


office engineering function there dealing withdesign data and that sort of thing and workingwith a few people in the field and taking theinformation that they got, trying to makepackages to deliver to the E&R Center. And[I] didn’t have much supervisoryresponsibility there at all.

Storey: Were you consciously moving through allthese different jobs or was this more Mr.Crane saying, “I really need your help overhere now.”

Chappelear: I think as much as anything it was under hissupervision and direction. I think he wasmoving me along.

Storey: Were you conscious that he was moving youalong?

Chappelear: I realized things were getting better, but, no, Idon’t guess that I was really that conscious,but as I look back on it many years later, yes, Ithink that he was in the process of trying todevelop me into more responsible positions.

Storey: Had you made any conscious decisions aboutwhat you wanted out of Reclamation at thattime? Do you remember?

Chappelear: Well, I felt like I was getting what I wanted

33


out of Reclamation. I really enjoyed theconstruction side of it, and so I was achievingsome of the things that I was looking for. First, was some construction experience and Iwas getting that. So from where I was comingfrom, I felt like I was getting what I wanted.

Storey: Then you were out building a hundred andforty miles of aqueduct.

Chappelear: Right.

Storey: That was fun, I take it?\

People Who Worked the Pipeline Project out ofLubbock

Chappelear: Oh, yeah. Enjoyed it. I had some great guysworking for me. I had Bill Moffitt [phonetic]and Bill Seth [phonetic] and Bob Carr[phonetic], three real nice young engineersthat were really carrying the load in the fieldand done a good job for me. Got to give thoseguys a lot of credit. They made things easyfor me.

Storey: They were doing the construction inspection?

Chappelear: Yes. and overview, and laying of the pipe. Moffitt and Carr were doing a lot of theconcrete structures. Bill Seth was following

34


the pipe laying and the inspection of it. Well,Moffitt was also in the pipe some, too.

Storey: What kind of travel would you have beendoing? Anything? Would you have beengoing to training courses, going toconferences, that kind of thing while you weredoing that?

Attended the Fourth Army Management School inSan Antonio, Texas

Chappelear: Yes. Of course, one of the first managementschools that I had an opportunity to go to wasreally a good one. The Fourth Army put on amanagement school annually, and I was giventhe opportunity while I was at Lubbock to goto one of their schools in San Antonio. Theytook so many civilians into it. They had reallytop-name executives from large companiesthat attended those schools and, you know,gave lectures and things of that nature. Sothat was the first management school that Ihad an opportunity to go to. I don’t rememberwhat year I did that, but it was probably in ‘66or thereabouts.

Storey: I noticed you said you had the opportunity togo to. Did that mean that somebody elsesuggested you go, or was this something yousought yourself?

35


Chappelear: No, this isn’t something that I would–I thinkhere again Spike sent me to it.

Storey: Interesting. And you were there for fouryears, I believe you said?

Chappelear: I was at Lubbock for four years, yes.

Storey: Right, how did your change come about then?

Chappelear: My change? What change are you–

Storey: To go to Washington, D.C.

Chappelear: How did I wind up in D.C.? Well, that’s along-winded story.

Storey: Good. That’s what I’m here for. (laughter)

While in Lubbock His Wife Attended Texas Techand Earned Her Degree in Elementary Education

Chappelear: Not a long-winded story. Before we get off ofthe four years at Lubbock, I’d like to point outthat my wife has always been a big help andsupport to me and she had worked for yearsand years at different kinds of jobs,bookkeeping, bank accountant, and even forthe Bureau of Reclamation for a short periodof time. But when we moved to Lubbock, sherealized that we were going to be there for

36


several years and she didn’t have a collegeeducation and she started at Texas Tech andwent right straight through and got a degree inthree and a half years. She got a degree inelementary education and then she startedteaching after that and taught for about tenyears after that. But that was not only anopportunity for me at Lubbock, but it affordedher some opportunities, too.

Move to Washington, D.C. to Work in the Waterand Lands Division

Now to get back to your question, howdid I wind up in Washington, D.C.

Storey: Maybe I’m pushing you too fast. Maybethere’s more about Lubbock we need to talkabout.

Chappelear: No, no, I think that’s pretty good.

Storey: Did you have any children?

Chappelear: No, the wife and I are just the wife and I.

Floyd Dominy

But we did get water to those sevencities there in the southern Panhandle. As thejob was coming to an end, I can remember

37


going to a party that the regional office washaving. The regional office was having thisparty because a fellow by the name of FloydDominy was coming to town, thecommissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. Leon Hill was the regional director atAmarillo. So all of us Canadian River Projecttypes, well we were invited to this party. Iwas there and I was talking with Dominyabout what I should possibly do with mycareer. One of the things that was going on inthe world that was interesting to me was thatin India they were talking about building theBeas [phonetic] Project, and it was going toinvolve several very large dams. They weregoing to be earthen-type dams. I’d hadexperience on three dams and I thought, “Hey,maybe that’s where my career should go. I’llgo through the Foreign Activities Office inWashington, D.C., and see if I can’t go overon the Beas Project.”

I offered this up to Dominy assomething that possibly I should think aboutdoing, and he immediately went into one ofhis little cussing sprees and said, “Well,goddamn, son, you’re not going to learnanything over there.” He said, “You’re goingto stagnate.” He said, “Well, did you everthink about coming in to Washington?” (laughter) So he did give me something to

38


think about there.

So I thought, “Well, heck, I can giveWashington a try.” And he’d just about givenme an invitation, and so I thought I wouldapply for a job up there. And I did, and I wentto work in the Water and Lands Divisionthere. And I went to work for Roy Boyd.

“. . . I wrote hundreds of letters the first year ortwo that I was in the Washington office. . . .”

We handled a lot of different letters. Ithink I wrote hundreds of letters the first yearor two that I was in the Washington office. Ofcourse, many of those were responding tocongressmen that had complaints from peoplethat weren’t happy with the Bureau’soperation and maintenance of their differentprojects in the field. Roy Boyd was also thetorts claim officer of the Bureau, and many ofthe letters that I wrote were associated withhis responsibility there. So I was really justthere working for Roy.

Worked for Morris Langley and Richard Shunick

The heads of the division was Morris Langleyand Richard Shunick. And here’s where Imade the contact that eventually got me backto where I am today sitting here in Arizona,

39


and that was Dick Shunick. So I was workingfor Dick and for Morris.

Worked on Compiling the Colorado RiverDocuments

I know that one of the jobs that MorrisLangley had me do was to put together a bookwhere we were trying to bind up a lot of oddsand ends that really amounted to the “law ofthe river” on the Colorado. I don’t have oneof those books, but we only put together threeor four of them. That was one job that I didfor Langley. I was trying to put all this stuffthat happened on the Colorado together insome sort of a chronological order that wouldtell you why things are the way they are todaylaw-wise.

Well, I puttered around there forseveral years. Let me see if I can come upwith the exact time. I was there from ‘68 untilin 1971. I still had an itch as far asconstruction was concerned. Ed Blout[phonetic] was chief of the Construction andContracting Activities Branch there under theDivision of General Engineering. Well, Edhad a drinking problem and I don’t know whatother kind of problems, but Ed wound upshooting himself and that left a vacancy inthat particular position. I wasn’t sure that I

40


wanted a job that would drive anybody todrink–

Storey: Much less–

Worked in the Division of General Engineering

Chappelear: Much less the other, but I did apply for thatjob, and I got it, and I was working for K. K.Young. He was chief of the Division ofGeneral Engineering at that time. And ofcourse, all that I was doing was reviewingmajor contracts that were going to beapproved in the Washington office,construction contracts, etc., and I putteredaround and worked at that job. Then K. K.Young pulled a big surprise on me. I didn’tthink he was nearly ready to retire, and therascal retired. I had worked for K. K. for, Iguess, about two years.

Then in December of ‘73 I had appliedfor and Stamm made me the chief of theDivision of General Engineering.

Storey: Stan?

Liked Going to Reclamation’s Annual ProgramConference to Set the Program for the next Year

Chappelear: Gilbert Stamm. Anyway, for whatever

41


reason, he made me the chief of the Divisionof General Engineering, and, boy, that was ajob that I really relished and enjoyed and got alot of satisfaction out of because that put mein a position where I could go to the annual“program conference” that the Bureau had,trying to figure out what jobs we were goingto be working on, what capability we had,what expenditures we had, where we weregoing to put the money, and all that was veryinteresting to me.

Storey: Tell me how that worked.

Chappelear: How that worked. Well–

Storey: I think it was a week long.

Chappelear: Yeah, that was a nice week-long conference. Of course, much of it was cut and dried beforewe ever went to the conference. Also, as chiefof the Division of General Engineering, wehad some annual meetings of the Bureau’sconstruction engineers, got an opportunity togo to Denver and participate in those and findout what the capabilities were at thesedifferent job sites, what these people weregoing to input.

But then the flip side of that I also wasable to come into contact with representatives

42


of OMB [Office of Management and Budget]because they were giving us feedback from upabove as to how much money we might haveto work with, what cuts we might have totake, and, of course, all this was always goingon. I think I enjoyed that part of the job prettygood.

Another aspect of it was that they werealways running youngsters through OMB, soit was always an educational process of tryingto educate some bright youngster that wasgoing up the ladder with what the Bureau ofReclamation’s objectives were, what projectswe had going on, and just what the heck wewere trying to do. So there was always aneducational process going on with OMB that Ienjoyed.

Also, on that job it brought me incontact with a number of congressmen, and Ihad friends that I didn’t know I had before Igot that job.

Storey: Oh, is that right. (laughter)

Jimmy Carter and Reclamation

Chappelear: Well, when you start getting Christmas cardsfrom congressmen like “Bizz” Johnson andothers that were interested in Reclamation and

43


how it progressed, some people wishing youwell. But that job went along, like I say, verywell, and I enjoyed it very much until alongcame a character by the name of JimmyCarter.

“. . . Carter, he was wanting to shut down all ofReclamation’s projects. . . . he did make my liferather miserable. . . . and I got rather fed up with

that and decided, “Well, if this is going to be sucha hassle, maybe I . . . need to get back to a

construction job.””

Of course, Carter, he was wanting toshut down all of Reclamation’s projects. Hehad no idea about what the needs were west ofthe Mississippi River, I don’t think. But heand his environmentalists, as I’m sure you’rewell aware, were trying to shut down all themajor ongoing construction of the Bureau ofReclamation, and he thought he was going toget it done. But politically he just wasn’t thatsavvy and there was just too much clout in theWest to get that done. But he did make mylife rather miserable. I always had some ofthese people in my office wanting informationon the ongoing work, what was going on, why,and all that sort of thing.


44


Storey: This is tape 2 of an interview by Brit Storeywith Dess L. Chappelear on September the3rd, 1996.

So you had a lot of folks [coming intothe office] during that period.

Chappelear: Yes, and I got rather fed up with that anddecided, “Well, if this is going to be such ahassle, maybe I don’t need this job and maybeI need to get back to a construction job.”

Dick Shunick Became Project Manager in Phoenixfor the Central Arizona Project

Well, things had been progressing onthe Central Arizona Project. One of themoves that had been made was that CliffPugh, who had been here for years and yearsdoing the preliminary work on the CentralArizona Project, Cliff retired and DickShunick got his job as the project manager. Well, activities on the project was authorizedand it was starting to get some funding, and ithad funding for a couple of years when Iapplied for the position of assistant projectsmanager. They didn’t have an assistantprojects manager, and they created thatposition because the activity was picking upwith the start of construction.

45


Applied for and Selected as Assistant ProjectManager

So I applied for that, as did aboutthirty other people in the Bureau, I think. Idon’t remember how many, but there was a lotof people [that] wanted the job. But Shunick,like I say, had known me in Washington, andso for some reason or other he picked me tocome down as assistant projects manager.

In Washington, when I first went inthere, I told Morris Langley, I said, “Well,don’t count on me for more than a year or twoand I’m going back West.” But they sort ofentice you along and give you these raises andwhatnot, and I went up the ladder to a GS-15as chief of the Division of GeneralEngineering. But this position as assistantprojects manager down here was a GS-14 job,and I said, “Well, I’ll take that job as a GS-14if I can keep my GS-15 salary,” which thatwas acceptable to everybody.

So I came down here in 1977. Thewife and I bought a home in Moon Valleythere on the north side of Phoenix. We hadoffices then in the Valley National Bank. Icommuted back and forth every day to thatoffice initially.

46


Storey: When was this that you moved?

Chappelear: I made the move in 1977.

Storey: You were saying we had offices in the ValleyNational Bank and you commuted.

Chappelear: Yeah, I commuted back and forth to it. Had alot of activities going on there. Eventually wegot the offices located out near where thecanal is. That made my commute a lot shorterand a lot nicer.

CAP Had a Lot of Things to Be Done

The CAP was really a challenge. There was a lot of things going on that hadn’tbeen settled and yet we were trying to build it. Shunick pulled a surprise on me.

Served as Acting Project Director, but Did NotReceive the Job When He Applied for it

He didn’t stay hitched very long and heretired, and I wound up being the actingproject manager there for a short time.

Ed Hallenback Became Project Manager

I applied for that job, didn’t get it, and Ed[Edward M.] Hallenback became the project

47


manager. Ed was a nice guy. I enjoyedworking with Ed.

Given Line Responsibility to Supervise SeveralDivisions

But with the alignment that we hadunder Ed, I had direct line responsibility forthe Environmental Division, for the PlanningDivision, for the Lands Division, and for acouple other offices–I don’t want to leave anyof this stuff out–the Operations Division, andthe Office of Distribution Systems, where wehad Larry.

Storey: Larry Morton?

Environmental Statements Had to Be Completed,and the Aqueduct Had to Be Sized for the Project

Chappelear: Yes. One of the really major problems intrying to keep the project going was to get allthis prerequisite stuff out of the way so youcould not hold up construction. Thoseenvironmental statements had to be taken careof. And, of course, you had to know what youwere going to do. But we didn’t know howmuch water we were going to take south andhow to size the aqueduct beyond Phoenix. Inthe authorizing legislation, they said it wasgoing to be a 3,000 cubic foot per second

48


aqueduct system to bring water into Phoenix. But beyond that we got into some sizingproblems.

Tucson Factions Take Positions on the CAP

When I first came to the Phoenix area,there was a minority group down at Tucsonthat was saying, “Don’t push that high-pricedwater off on us. We don’t want the CAPwater,” you know. That was going on. Iprobably hadn’t been here two years until thatflip-flopped and another group emergedsaying, “You’re robbing us of our birth right,and we want more CAP water.”

CAP Was Also Affected by Indian Water Rights inthe Area

Then associated with the sizingproblems was some changes in the secretaryof interior and trying to settle some of theIndian water rights situations within the state. So we had Secretary Andrus making changesin the Indian water allocations. In fact, we gotIndian water allocations all the way to thesouth of the Papagos and the San Xavier area,down south of Tucson, that weren’t initially inthe plans when I first came on board.

Storey: They weren’t in the plans?

49


Sizing the Salt Gila Pumping Plant

Chappelear: No, no. In other words, they kept addingIndian tribes trying to settle their water claimsagainst the Federal Government. So how tosize the Salt Gila Pumping Plant was a bigconcern of mine and we were getting upagainst a real tight deadline. And finally Iasked the guys in the Planning Division whatadditional amount of money would it cost tosize it where we could take even 3,000 cfs onsouth if we needed to. We finally made adecision on the Salt Gila Pumping Plant, weoversized it at the expense of a few milliondollars so that we could proceed with theconstruction work, but then all of it sort of fellin place after that. That was the toughestdecision, was what size to size that Salt GilaPumping Plant. It was of great concern to me. It was sort of like trying to hit a moving targetbecause it was changing rapidly.

Storey: I have the sense that the whole CAP wasdoing that. Things were evolving constantly.

“. . . CAP was visualized that initially virtually allthe water would go to . . . the different irrigationdistricts in the state, and then . . . we priced thefarmers nearly out of the water-taking business.

And we had built a lot of distribution systems thatweren’t going to be utilized to the extent that we

50


thought. . . .”

Chappelear: Yes, I think that they were. As you’re aware,the CAP was visualized that initially virtuallyall the water would go to these farmers, to thedifferent irrigation districts in the state, andthen by the time we got the project finishedand the water priced, we priced the farmersnearly out of the water-taking business. Andwe had built a lot of distribution systems thatweren’t going to be utilized to the extent thatwe thought.

Back when we were in the planningprocess, how to size these little distribution–Iwon’t say little, some of them were large–buthow to size these different distributionsystems to these irrigation districts, there wastwo lines of thought on that. Some of thepeople were thinking, well, we can give thema small flow into the irrigation district andthey can irrigate all their land from it.

But the farmers realized that if theycould take their full allocation and at a highrate of speed, they could use almost levelfarming techniques, flood irrigate the lands,get more even distribution of the water than ifyou started out down the row and on one endof the field you get a lot of water, at the otherend you don’t get so much. They were

51


wanting to go to some of these more modern-day irrigation techniques. So some of thesizing of the distribution systems were basedon that, flood irrigating of the lands. So thedistribution systems were bigger than whatyou might have done prior to that.

I know that we were able to get a loanfor, say, the Harquahala Irrigation District outhere, and they were a progressive and nicebunch of people. Then they decided that, bygolly, they couldn’t afford to take the water,and so that distribution system is sitting therenot being utilized. They made a settlementwith the Secretary of the Interior on therepayment of it, and a lot of that water wentinto a pot for Indian water settlement. So itgot very complicated. But back when wewere doing that planning and that work, why,we didn’t see some of those things. Hindsight’s great.

Storey: Yeah. A hundred percent, they say.

Chappelear: Yeah.

Storey: Or is it twenty-twenty.

Central Arizona Project Association

Chappelear: I don’t know. (laughter) Had a lot of people

52


in Arizona that were interested in the project. We had an organization called the C-A-P-A,the Central Arizona Project Association. These people were following the project fromday one, wanting to know what was going on,what progress was being made, how could weutilize more money. They were reallyapproaching the project from the politicalside. I had many, many Friday luncheonswith the executive director of the C-A-P-Abecause they followed the project very, veryclosely.

Storey: Who was the executive director?

Chappelear: Rich Johnson, the biggest part of the time. We had before her, Zeta Darter [phonetic],Rich Johnson. But those were good people towork with because they were supportive of theproject and trying to be helpful.

Central Arizona Water Conservation District(CAWCD)

Then, of course, another factor in theCAP is the Central Arizona WaterConservation District [CAWCD], which is agroup that was formed by Arizona law to enterinto a repayment contract with the FederalGovernment to repay the project. Tom Clarkstarted out as the head of that, and he was a

53


former Bureau of Reclamation employee andhe was really a nice guy to work with. Asthey were trying to build up their maintenanceforce and take over the operation of theproject, the Bureau role became less and less.

Storey: How long were you the assistant projectmanager?

Served as Assistant Project Manager from 1977 to1985

Chappelear: From ‘77 until ‘85.

Storey: So you were there when the first waterdeliveries were made?

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: Tell me about it.

Chappelear: It was a pretty exciting day. We had a lot ofpeople come out to take a look at the waterrunning in the canal. Always try and makethat a big event. You know, all the politicaltypes were out, and I guess the commissionerof Reclamation was here and the regionaldirectors and people of that nature. Had a bigceremony.

Storey: The commissioner at that time would have

54


been?

Chappelear: Oh, who was that?

Storey: Now, let’s see, now we’re talking aboutHarquahala, right? In ‘82 or ‘83?

Chappelear: Well, let’s see. Harquahala, I think the watergot to them later than that. I thought you weretalking about when the water came toPhoenix, the Phoenix area. That was in ‘85.

Storey: That still probably would have been BobBroadbent.

Chappelear: Yeah, I think it was Broadbent. Correct.

Storey: What was he like as commissioner?

Bob Broadbent

Chappelear: I don’t think he was a very agreeable fellow. Idon’t know that he was on top of the job likesome other commissioners. Of course,Dominy, I guess, was the man that knew hisjob and everybody else’s more than anyoneelse. (laughter) Dominy was probably thesharpest character we ever had as acommissioner. And Gil Stamm was a goodcommissioner. He had been with the Bureauof Reclamation for many, many years.

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Storey: He was really the last Reclamationcommissioner brought up through the ranks,as it were.

Chappelear: No, I think it was Stamm, Gil Stamm.

Storey: Right. So then we had Keith Higginson.

Chappelear: Yeah, Keith Higginson and Broadbent andwhatnot, they were more political types andnot as knowledgeable and I don’t think hadthe interest in the Bureau of Reclamation thatsome of the others did.

Storey: We were talking about the first delivery ofwater into Phoenix here. What kinds ofevents were organized, if any?

Chappelear: Well, there was a deal where you opened thegate and you let the water flow and people seethe water running in, and there were someevents that were located on the bank of theaqueduct just north of Phoenix there. We hadthe project headquarter’s building and peoplewere able to go through the projectheadquarter’s building and they could see theelectrical display map of the project.

Storey: Oh, in the control room?

Chappelear: In the control room. I think a lot of people

56


have gotten a big kick out of that.

Storey: Now, was the control room and the controlsystem built while you were there?

Planning and Building the Control System forCAP

Chappelear: Yes, yes.

Storey: Was that part of your planning work, forinstance?

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: What was going on in the planning of thatsystem?

“. . . it was pretty complicated. Ed Hallenbackkept a real tight rein on that thing. But some ofthe choices that had to be made dealt with the

system reliability. The final outcome of it went to .. . primarily microwave for day-to-day operation,

backup buried line. . . .”

Chappelear: Well, it was pretty complicated. EdHallenback kept a real tight rein on that thing. But some of the choices that had to be madedealt with the system reliability. The finaloutcome of it went to buried line and then alsobackup–well, primarily microwave for day-to-

57


day operation, backup buried line. So I thinkit’s a pretty good system and one that’s beenfunctioning well.

Storey: Of course, it’s an example of the waycomputers are changing on us, even as wespeak.

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: They have this huge room of a computer thatwill be replaced, I gather, pretty soon by acouple of PCs, maybe.

Chappelear: Yeah, these computers keep getting smallerand smaller. I’ve got one in the back roomhere that would have occupied several roomsa few years ago.

Storey: Were you seeing the effects ofcomputerization on the operation of thesystems? Was that a new innovation goingon, or what?

Chappelear: Well, I don’t think all that much. Certainlywe were going to be able to monitor all thepumping plants and monitor on each pump allthese different things, but I don’t think it wasthat heavy into the computer. I think it wasmore the old hard wire stuff that we werepicking up. I don’t think that we were going

58


to rely on a computer all that much for theoperation. You had to be able to operate itmanually if you had to.

Storey: One of the things that I gather was unusualabout the Phoenix Office was that it was acombined planning and construction office.

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: Rather than a construction office or a planningoffice. Did you see that there were any issuesthat arose because of that, that you hadn’t seenbefore in Reclamation?

Chappelear: Well, I think that we had some conflicts,different people wanting to assert themselvesand make the decisions and, yeah, I think thatthere was some of that there.

Storey: Do you remember any specific samples?

“. . . Andy Dolyniuk was disappointed that hewasn’t calling all the shots, but he really couldn’t,and I don’t think that he appreciated some of theplanning problems that we got into. Some of the

planning problems that really required a lot oftime and were difficult to resolve was the flood

control for the Phoenix area. . . .”

Chappelear: Well, I think Andy Dolyniuk was

59

5. Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation.


disappointed that he wasn’t calling all theshots, but he really couldn’t, and I don’t thinkthat he appreciated some of the planningproblems that we got into. Some of theplanning problems that really required a lot oftime and were difficult to resolve was theflood control for the Phoenix area.

Orme Dam and the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation

In the original legislation that authorized theproject, we were going to have an Orme Damat the confluence of the Salt and Verde Rivers. The Fort McDowell Indians5 objected to thisand also the environmentalists, and so we hadto start looking for small alternatives to OrmeDam.

Control of the Salt and Verde Rivers

How were we going to control the Salt andVerde Rivers?

When we first started looking at theproblem, we went back and we reviewed thehydrology for the existing dams on the SaltRiver, the old Salt Project, the Salt RiverProject. The first thing that we found out wasthat by a modern-day hydrology, none of thespillways on those dams were adequate to

60


withstand a major flood that we might have.

Plan 6 for the Central Arizona Project, IncludingCliff Dam

So that gave us the problem about howcan we still provide this flood control and getalong with some safety-of-dams problems thatwe also had on one of the dams in the systemand still provide this flood control. So welooked at every scheme and idea that anybodyin the Phoenix area could come up with, andfinally came up with what was known as Plan6. In Plan 6, we were going to raise RooseveltDam, we were going to build the NewWaddell Dam, and we were going to build adam on the Verde River called Cliff Dam.

Steve Magnussen

To get the Phoenix area, the wholecommunity in on that was a major job. Thefellow that headed up the Planning Divisionfor us was Steve Magnussen, a real brightyoung man and a fellow that did a super job inresolving these issues of flood control andstorage for project use. And you’ve really gotto give Steve a lot of credit on this, he was theleader in this program.

But this was one of the major

61


problems that we had with the planning andnot one that you would expect a constructionengineer to be able to resolve, because it tooka Governor’s committee associated with thisand input from many, many people to geteveryone to agree to this Plan 6, including theenvironmentalists. But then theenvironmentalists kicked out on us a littlefurther down the road, swore that there weresome nesting eagles up in the Cliff Dam sitearea, and kept us from ever building CliffDam.

Storey: So those were the kinds of things youwouldn’t have expected the projectconstruction engineer to deal with?

Developing Environmental Statements for theCentral Arizona Project

Chappelear: No. And also you wouldn’t expect him to beable to deal with the preparation of theenvironmental impact statements, becausethey took a lot of coordination with Fish andWildlife Service, different groups that youwouldn’t expect a construction engineer to beout there doing day-to-day contacts with. Andyou sure couldn’t build a stretch of thataqueduct unless you had a plan, unless youhad an environmental impact statement andhad the property acquired. And, of course,

62


those were things that were sort of runningalong there under my supervision.

Storey: The project engineer at first was Mr. Shunick. Do you have any–

Chappelear: No, not the project engineer, the projectmanager.

Storey: Excuse me, the project manager.

Chappelear: But before him we had Cliff Pugh.

Storey: Did you ever know Mr. Pugh? You didn’twork with him, I don’t believe.

Chappelear: I knew Mr. Pugh, yes, but didn’t work withhim all that much. He kept dropping by tochat with us. See, I didn’t come here untilafter he retired.

Storey: That’s right. Did you ever hear anythingabout how Mr. Shunick came out andultimately became the project manager?

Chappelear: No, I really don’t know the story on that, whatconnections he had that got him that position.

Dick Shunick

Storey: What was Mr. Shunick like as project

63


manager?

“He was a good communicator. He didn’t havethe construction experience, but in dealing with

the political types and in dealing with the differentirrigation districts that we were trying to deal with,

he was a very good communicator. I think thatwas his strong point. . . .”

Chappelear: He was a very personable man and met anddealt with people very well. He got alongwith people. He was a good communicator. He didn’t have the construction experience,but in dealing with the political types and indealing with the different irrigation districtsthat we were trying to deal with, he was a verygood communicator. I think that was hisstrong point.

Storey: What about Mr. Hallenback?

“. . . when it came to dealing with the press andsome of these other things, Shunick often left thatto me and so did Ed. I dealt with the press a lot. I

was on TV a lot. . . .”

Chappelear: I think Ed was very good in the electricalfield, and that was primarily his background. Ed got along with people very well, but whenit came to dealing with the press and some ofthese other things, Shunick often left that to

64


me and so did Ed. I dealt with the press a lot. I was on TV a lot.

Storey: How were your experiences in that regard?

Chappelear: Pretty good, but there were some members ofthe press that you had to be very cautiouswith, and I always was. This project withCAP was in the limelight so much–


Storey: We had quite a few visitors on C-A-P.

Chappelear: Yes. We had visitors such as Senator [DanielPatrick “Pat”] Moynihan. You know, notnecessarily supporters of the Bureau ofReclamation, but people that were interestedin the project. And over the years we had a lotof visitors that came and looked at the project. But I think even Moynihan came around tothat it was a project that should be supportedand finished.

Storey: You must have been in Washington when thedefense of the project was taking place.

Chappelear: When what?

Storey: When the defense against the so-called Carter

65


“hit list” was taking place.

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: Do you remember anything about that periodof time and the people who were coming inand defending Reclamation projects inWashington?

Chappelear: No, I don’t remember who was coming inparticularly or if anyone did. I think that thecommissioner was doing most of thedefending. I was fielding a lot of questionsand that sort of thing, as I was telling youearlier. Got a lot of those answers, of course,from the people in the field, you know.

Storey: The Indian water issues must have beeninteresting. Were you involved fairly directlyin any of that?

“. . . so much of the CAP is now Indian water, theFederal Government’s really gotten itself involvedin something that’s going to be very expensive in

the long haul. . . .”

Chappelear: No, but they’re still not resolved. Some ofthem are, and I think some of these Indiansare still looking for more water. But so muchof the CAP is now Indian water, the FederalGovernment’s really gotten itself involved in

66


something that’s going to be very expensive inthe long haul.

Storey: So you didn’t go to meetings with them, forinstance?

“. . . Indians were going through BIA [Bureau ofIndian Affairs] and the Secretary of the Interior . . .probably conducted at a much higher level than

here. But the repercussions were coming back tous in trying to deal with the sizing of the system

and its operation. . . .”

Chappelear: Well, most of those meetings were probablythe Indians were going through BIA [Bureauof Indian Affairs] and the Secretary of theInterior and local politicians and that sort ofthing. It was probably conducted at a muchhigher level than here. But the repercussionswere coming back to us in trying to deal withthe sizing of the system and its operation.

Storey: And that made it complicated, I guess.

Chappelear: Well, it made us very concerned. I mean,trying to get all the prerequisites out of theway so we could proceed with theconstruction.

Storey: Who was the regional director when youcame?

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Regional Directors

Chappelear: Oh, let’s see, [Nelson W.] Plummer was therefor a good part of it.

Storey: Maybe Manny [Manuel] Lopez [Jr.].

Chappelear: Lopez earlier, yeah.

Storey: Bill Plummer.

Chappelear: And who was the last one there? I can’t evenremember his name now. Lopez was a goodguy to work with, he was easy to get alongwith. Plummer was, too. Are you going totalk to Plummer, per chance?

Storey: Well, I hope so, eventually.

Chappelear: Yeah, well, Bill and I had a good workingrelationship. I don’t know, for some reason orother Bill and Hallenback didn’t get along toogood and Plummer would come to me insteadof going through Hallenback, and that was avery awkward situation for me.

Storey: Um-hmm. I can imagine it would be.

Chappelear: But I don’t think Ed gave a damn whetherPlummer came to him or not. (laughter) Idon’t know, it was strange there, their

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relationship. Maybe Plummer can explainthat to you.

Storey: Was it when Plummer retired that Hallenbackmoved up there?

Chappelear: Yeah. No, let’s see. Who else do we have inthere? We had another one in there.

Storey: Well, I’ve got the list in my briefcase.

Chappelear: No, it was before Hallenback we had anotherone up there.

Storey: Well, let’s see. It went Arleigh West, then itwent Manny Lopez.

Chappelear: Yeah. I met West, he came into Washington afew times when I was in there. I simply knewhim when I saw him. And then Lopez, andthen was it was Plummer after that? And thenthere was another one in there betweenPlummer and, oh, hell, I know his name realwell, but I can’t recall it.

Storey: How about Gene [Eugene] Hinds?

Chappelear: Yeah, Gene Hinds. That’s who I was trying tothink of.

Storey: In there between.

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Chappelear: Yeah. I guess Hallenback was regionaldirector after Hinds, right.

Storey: Well, why did you decide to retire? What wasgoing on?

Why He Decided to Retire

Chappelear: Oh, some of the things that I had beenworking with were coming to a close. All theplanning was done, their land acquisition wasessentially completed. It looked like thingswere just sort of phasing out. I was eligible toretire, and I thought hey, there must besomething out there to do, so I retired in ‘85. Been retired now for twelve years. If youwant to know why I can’t remember some ofthis stuff, I think that’s contributed to it. (laughter)

Storey: I know what you mean.

Activities since Retirement

Chappelear: And had a lot of fun since I retired. The wifeand I have made several good trips. We’vebeen to Alaska. We’ve been up to Kotzebue,Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle. Then alsobeen to Hawaii, been to the Caribbean, been toAustralia, New Zealand. Made a few tripslike that, enjoyed all that. I’ve done a lot of

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golfing, I’m still doing a lot of golfing. I golffour or five times a week. Hard for me to findtime for guys like you.

Storey: You’re not working, though. You haven’tdone any work?

Chappelear: Well, I’ve done some things since I moved outhere. I served on several water committees,[unclear] Water Committee, property ownersassociation, and then we have a recreationcenters board. I’ve served on a watercommittee for them. So it’s hard to get out ofthe water business altogether.

And since I’ve retired, one thing thatwas sort of fun came along. I was a memberof USCOLD, United States Committee OnLarge Dams, and they had an internationalmeeting in San Francisco and they asked meto pick up one of the tours on the LowerColorado River and show people the dams onthe Lower Colorado, which I did. I had abunch of Englishmen and Frenchmen took atour, and that was a nice little fun thing that Idid since I retired.

And then even here recently, right nowI’m lined up to give some testimony as anexpert witness in October. One of the localutilities is trying to get a rate increase through

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the years on a corporation commission, andthis utilities company is lined up to take someCAP water and they’re wanting to chargedifferent people for–they’re having to pay justto retain the CAP water allocation. I’m sureyou’re familiar with that. Whether they useany CAP water or not.

Storey: Yeah.

Chappelear: And so I’m going to give a little testimony onthose CAP water allocations and make somecomments on whether or not they shouldretain or whether they should be reimbursedfor that CAP water allocation. The way thatthey’re approaching it, I don’t think that theyshould at this time. The utility really hasn’tdone the planning work that it should, andthey’re trying to broad-brush it and chargeeverybody the same amount. I think that theyneed to continue with their planning effort anddetermine where the water’s going to be usedand charge those people that are going tobenefit from it and not put it on just a broadarea and charge everyone the same.

I think whoever benefits from thewater should have to pay for it. So that’s theway I’m planning on testifying in thisparticular matter. In fact, I got fourteen pagesof testimony that’s been turned in on the

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thing. So it’s hard to get out of the waterbusiness entirely.

Storey: Well, it’s an important field in the West.

Chappelear: Yes, it is.

Storey: Well, our time is up, I see. I’d like to ask youwhether you’re willing for the information onthese tapes and the resulting transcripts to beused by researchers.

Chappelear: Sure. It’s all pretty general-type stuff.

Storey: Good. Thank you very much.


Storey: This is Brit Allan Storey, senior historian ofthe Bureau of Reclamation, interviewing DessL. Chappelear at his home in Sun City West[,Arizona,] on September the 5th, 1996 at abouteight o’clock in the morning. This is tape one.

Encounters with James Watt

You were just getting ready to tell meabout James Watt and your encounters withhim, I think.

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Chappelear: Well, I didn’t have all that many encounters atthat high a level, but I remember especiallythis one that I had with Jim Watt. He had justcome in to work in the Under Secretary’sOffice of Water and Power, whatever we werecalling it at that time. I was writing a lot ofletters, and I’d written this one letter inresponse to an inquiry from a congressman. Well, this congressman was of the wrongpolitical party, as far as James Watt wasconcerned. This letter I’d sent down for thesecretary’s signature, and he was in theprocess of reviewing it, and, by golly, he hadme down there called on the carpet as soon ashe read the letter. He says, “Why are youproviding all of this information to thiscongressman? He’s not the right politicalparty.”

Watt wasn’t very politically-orientedand didn’t realize the way that we actuallyplayed the game there in Washington and thatwas that, hey, you didn’t deny thesecongressmen anything. It didn’t make anydifference what their political affiliationswere. It would certainly have been bad for theBureau to have been taking a political stance,so we never did in responding to anycorrespondence. We always tried to give thebest answers and that sort of thing. But that’ssort of a funny little tale that I can tell, that

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James Watt had me on the carpet and hehadn’t been in the department a week, I don’tguess, before this occurred.

Storey: This would have been when you were in theWashington office, then?

Chappelear: Yes, that’s correct. And I don’t rememberexactly what time he came in there, but then,of course, he went on to become the Secretaryof the Interior.

Storey: Yeah, of course, a few years later.

Chappelear: Yes. He did a lot of things in dealing withpeople that I heard a lot of stories about him. I had a good friend that worked in the Bureauof Outdoor Recreation, and I thought he gavehim a rather bad break. As I was relating toyou there earlier, Watt got along on thepremise that he was a very religious personand he prayed a lot and he got a lot of hisguidance from God, but I never really felt thatGod was that unscrupulous.

Storey: On another topic, tell me why you becameinterested in engineering. You were a civilengineer, is that correct?

Why He Was Interested in Studying CivilEngineering

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Chappelear: Yes, that’s correct. Well, I guess I kind of gotoff into it innocently, if you will. When I wasa kid, I was raised on a farm and when I gotolder, about fifteen or sixteen years old, myfather was in bad health, and I tried to raise acouple of crops and I got a couple of cottoncrops up that looked pretty good, and then itturned dry, and I never made anything. I said,“Hey, this farming is not for me. I’ve got todo something else.”

In this little community that I camefrom, a community of about 900 people, Ireally didn’t have too many people that couldgive me guidance, but one person told me that,heck, if I got into engineering, it was a goodway to go and I could have a good living andwould probably be reimbursed financially if Idid.

So I really had one teacher that was agood one. Her name was Gertrude McBride,and she was very good in mathematics. I tooka number of high school courses under her,and she thought I was pretty good inmathematics and that sort of thing. So I thinkshe gave me some steerage there, although shedidn’t know a heck of a lot about civilengineering and that sort of thing, but she didrecognize that I did have a little aptitude in

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mathematics.

So then I went off to college and Ithought, well, heck, I went to this little juniorcollege that I was telling you about, Cameron,and I thought, well, I’ll just try and–[Taperecorder turned off]

Storey: We were talking about your aptitude formathematics in Cameron.

Chappelear: Oh, well, I guess when I went to Cameron Idecided that I would get all the prerequisitesfor an engineering degree, so I got into themathematics there and getting all the littleprerequisite stuff in, English literature andwriting and all that sort of stuff.

Storey: Then when you came to work forReclamation, you said they sent you tosurveying camp. Was that a training course?

Chappelear: No, no, they didn’t send me to surveyingcamp. I had been at a surveying campbecause I was winding up my collegeeducation.

Storey: At Buena Vista?

Sent to Fort Cobb Reservoir to Run a Survey Crew

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Chappelear: Yeah, up in Colorado. And I was up there inthat high altitude and it was just colder thanheck up there, I nearly froze to death. Then Icame down to Oklahoma and theyimmediately put me to work running a levelscrew, running some levels around on somewater wells in the vicinity of what was goingto be Fort Cobb Reservoir, if and when we gotthe dam completed.

Storey: Did Reclamation send you to any trainingcourses or anything?

Sent to Earth and Concrete School byReclamation

Chappelear: Well, some of the earlier ones was the earthschool and the concrete school thatReclamation has, and I can’t remember whatyears I went to those, but the earth school, Iremember I went in ‘59, and I think I probablywent to the concrete school in ‘58, somethinglike that.

Storey: What were they like?

Chappelear: Maybe even earlier than that.

“. . . the Bureau of Reclamation had very definiteideas about quality control in both of these areas

and had manuals associated with the concrete

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work and the earth embankment work, and theywanted to make sure that everyone that was

working on Bureau work was well indoctrinatedand knowledgeable with these manuals and what

the Bureau expected out of them. . . .”

Well, of course the Bureau ofReclamation had very definite ideas aboutquality control in both of these areas and hadmanuals associated with the concrete workand the earth embankment work, and theywanted to make sure that everyone that wasworking on Bureau work was wellindoctrinated and knowledgeable with thesemanuals and what the Bureau expected out ofthem. So I went to those schools and reallyenjoyed them. Later on in my college work, Iknow I told you I wound up four years in theservice and then I wound up going toOklahoma A&M. I was very interested inearth sciences and did pretty well in those. SoI really did enjoy the two schools that I wentto with the Bureau in that area.

Storey: Where were they held?

Chappelear: They were held at the E&R Center,Engineering and Research Center there inDenver, on the west side of Denver. DenverFederal Center, I think, is the name of it.

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Storey: Right. How long were they?

Chappelear: They were pretty short. I can’t remember howlong they were, about a week, I think, on eachone of them.

Storey: So they had Reclamation people come in andteach, or how did that work?

Chappelear: Yeah. Mostly it was Reclamation people thatwere doing the instructing.

Storey: When you got into the hydrology office inOklahoma City, what kinds of things were youdoing?

“We had a number of different streams insouthwest Oklahoma that we were looking at. . . .

trying to size dams . . . Much of that work wasrelated to municipal and industrial water supplieswhich the Bureau of Reclamation was just getting

into at that time . . .”

Chappelear: We had a number of different streams insouthwest Oklahoma that we were looking at. We were trying to size dams, and so we wouldput a dam at a certain size on a particularstream and then we would run an operationalstudy and see if the thing went dry and howmuch overflow we had and how much waterwe would waste. We were trying to, of

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course, reach some optimum size dam onthese different streams that we were lookingat. Of course, all these streams that we werelooking at were in an area where they wouldmeet some existing need for water. Much ofthat work was related to municipal andindustrial water supplies which the Bureau ofReclamation was just getting into at that time,and so they were taking a whole look at someof that.

Storey: What would optimum size have meant toReclamation in those days?

Chappelear: Well, of course, the big problem with sizing adam is the cost of the spillway, and so youwere trying to, in the design of one, youwould try and balance it out where you couldminimize the cost for a certain water output. Of course, also we were interested in thereliability of being able to furnish a setamount of water, you know, whatever thewater need was. So it varied.

Storey: I don’t understand how you were balancing. Were you doing projections at different sizesand then costing out, or how did that work?

Chappelear: Yes, yes, actually that’s what we were doing. You know, we would maybe put a size in, acertain size dam, certain size spillway, and

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then we would take all the years of record thatwe had and we would see what would happento that reservoir under past flow conditions–how many spills you’ve got and how it wouldoperate.

Storey: Then the idea was, what, to get the mosteconomical dam?

Chappelear: Well, certainly that was all left up to thedesign boys in the Engineering and ResearchCenter. But it was trying to come up with astructure of a size that would probably alsoprovide some flood control if flood controlwas needed. Of course, Bill was alwaystrying to work all those things in there. Butmostly in the Hydrology Section we werechecking out different size dams withdifferent elevations on the height of thespillway, and from that we would try and justdetermine what would happen on that streamif you put a dam of that size on it and whatkind of yields you would get from it.

Storey: Using past water flow records?

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: How much of a history did you have in thatarea for the hydrology?

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Chappelear: Well, certainly it was not all that long in somecases. Probably less than fifty years, maybetwenty-five, thirty years, forty.

Storey: Is that really adequate or did you have toproject back into the past or what happens?

Chappelear: Well, I would say it may not have beenadequate in all cases, and we know that thatcertainly wasn’t adequate on the ColoradoRiver with the Colorado River Compact. Ithink when they came up with the ColoradoRiver Compact and divvied up the waterbetween the upper and low basins, they hadless than, I think it was less than twenty years,twenty-five years of records on the flow of theColorado. And that made them make a prettybad mistake there.

Certainly since those days when Iworked in that Hydrology Department tryingto come up with the maximum probable flood,the viewpoints on that have changeddrastically, and the maximum probable floodwould be much higher today on those streamsthat we were looking at then what we weresaying it would have been. So a lot’shappened in that area.

Storey: That’s because the field has evolved withbetter understanding?

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“. . . turn of the century on the Salt River Project. When they started out with the spillways there onsome of the dams that they built after they built

Roosevelt Dam, all those spillways are reallyinadequate under present-day hydrology

techniques. . . .”

Chappelear: Yes, it’s become a lot more of a science. It’sjust like at the turn of the century on the SaltRiver Project. When they started out with thespillways there on some of the dams that theybuilt after they built Roosevelt Dam, all thosespillways are really inadequate under present-day hydrology techniques. And as a result ofthat, that’s why Roosevelt Dam was raised, togive it a lot more flood control capacity, andin doing so, made all those smaller damsdownstream from Roosevelt, made theirspillways adequate. That’s sort of jumpingback on the Central Arizona Project and awayfrom Oklahoma City, but it’s still related.

Storey: You went out to Fort Cobb.

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: Was that at the point where you took over thelab?

Chappelear: Gosh, no, I didn’t take over anything at thatpoint. I went to work for a guy by the name

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of Al Kendricks, and Al had run several labs. He set out to educate me in what actuallyhappened in the building of the dam andquality control on embankment and concrete. And he worked me pretty hard. I don’t knowhow many concrete mixes we went throughbefore we came up with one that wassatisfactory.

Determining the Cement Mix to Use at Fort CobbDam

I know I continued that to the extremeon the concrete at Fort Cobb Dam. I finallygot some mixes down there that were lookingpretty lean to the project manager, and thatwas C. O. Crane, we called “Spike.” I had amix there that I was going to save a few morepounds of cement, and old Spike told me, hesays, “Well, I think you’re getting awful leanon the cement in this concrete. I don’t thinkwe need to save that much money.” I wasmaking him too nervous because he had theexperience, I guess, that I didn’t have, that ifyou did have a little trouble with your controlwith the batching plant, then you could windup with some inferior concrete and have alittle mess on your hands. So I learned quite alot from Mr. Crane in time to reach somebalance in some of these areas, and that wasone of them. He felt I was going to the

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extreme in some of these concrete mixes thatwe were doing there at Fort Cobb.

Storey: Most people who’ve talked to me about doinglab work talk about testing the material that’sgoing into the dam or the earth material that’sbeing compacted at the dam.

Chappelear: Oh, sure.

Storey: I think what I’m hearing you say to me is thatyou were working on developing the mix thatwas going to be used?

Chappelear: For the concrete structures, but it was an earthembankment dam. Of course, I did a lot ofwork on the permeability of the soils and inlocating borrow areas, drilling out borrowareas to see that we had enough material. Wegot into some trouble there on Fort CobbDam, and one of the problems we had wasthat in trying to locate these borrow areas wewere in an area that had a lot of sandstone,and it was a very soft sandstone. Some of theboys had told us that, well, if you canexcavate it with a No. 7 Cat or a D7 Cat, youcan excavate it with scrapers and use it in theembankment.

So we went into these areas, we dugsome test pits with the Cat and decided that,

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well, boy we had all this material available. Then when we got in the actual constructionof the dam, we found that, hey, that wasn’t avery good criteria, because as soon as we gotscrapers in there, pans, trying to excavate thematerial, when we got down to a certain leveland the density got so high in the material, itwouldn’t excavate. They couldn’t excavate it.

So I got in a little bit of a frenzy therein trying to relocate some borrow areas andlocate enough material to build Fort CobbDam. That was an interesting little problemthat developed there.

Storey: And that happened during construction, Iguess.

Chappelear: Yes, it did, and probably was something thatwe should have known better on, but got somebad advice.

Storey: Well, I’m something of an innocent aboutconcrete. I thought you sort of put togetherpreset quantities of cement and aggregate andwater and you ended up with your concretemixture.

Chappelear: Oh, well, of course you do, but it can makequite a little bit of difference as to the type ofsand that you’re using and the gradation of the

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sand and the type of aggregates that you’reusing and the gradation of it. So in differenttypes of structures, if you have a lot of steel init, you may want to go to a small sizemaximum aggregate, maybe three-quarter ofan inch. If you had a more massiveplacement, you’d go to a mix with larger sizemaximum size aggregate, maybe three-inch.

So it varies a great deal as to the typeof placement that you’re making and howtight it is. Maybe in small walls where youhave reinforcing steel, you have to go to asmaller type maximum size aggregate, andthen if you were making a placement wherethere was a lot of room between the rebars,why you can go to the bigger size rock. Butof course, what you’re trying to use is use asmuch rock as you can and as little cement,because the cement is expensive.

So we always made a number of trialmixes, say, using three-quarter-inchmaximum, inch and a half and three-inch sizeaggregates. So we would have a number ofdifferent mixes on a particular job. Theinspector would call for a certain kind,dependent upon the type of work that he wasdoing. Does that answer your question?

Storey: Well, it starts, yes.

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Chappelear: Oh, okay.

Storey: Tell me what you would do with your trialmixes then.

Chappelear: Well, with the trial mixes, you would varythem out of sand and the amount of rock thatyou might have, trying to get the bestgradation, and then you would also vary theamount of cement. But one of the things thatcomes into being with any of these concretemixes is that you have problems in gettingconcrete into forms and getting itconsolidated. You use vibrators to do this. One of the measures of the workability ofconcrete is slump. You’ve probably heard ofslump cones.


Chappelear: Well, slump cones, a truncated cone that’sabout twelve inches high, about four inches atthe top and about six inches in the bottom, andyou’ll make a trial concrete mix, mix it upwet, and you’ll fill this cone and tap it in witha little tamping rod in three different layers,and then you remove this cone. When youremove the cone, the concrete slumps. And,of course, this is a measure of its workability.

“If it just stands up there and doesn’t move, you

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know you’re going to have a mix that people can’twork with in getting it in the form satisfactorily

and getting it consolidated. . . .”

If it just stands up there and doesn’t move,you know you’re going to have a mix thatpeople can’t work with in getting it in theform satisfactorily and getting it consolidated.

So in some concrete, if it’s a massiveplacement, we would work with slumps aslittle as one and a half inches. But if we weregoing to put it in a wall or something that waspretty tight, then we would try and come upwith a mix that would have a higher slump.

“. . . we realized that by inducing air entrainingagents in concrete we could increase the

durability of the concrete and it would better beable to go through freeze-thaw cycles. . . .”

Other things that are associated with thesetrial mixes, of course, was that in the Bureauof Reclamation we realized that by inducingair entraining agents in concrete we couldincrease the durability of the concrete and itwould better be able to go through freeze-thaw cycles.

Storey: By having air in it?

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Chappelear: By having air entrained within the concrete. The air entraining agents would dissipatebillions of little tiny bubbles in the concrete,and it would make the concrete better able togo through freeze-thaw cycles and not crackand break up.

Storey: So you would experiment with thoseentraining agents?

Chappelear: Well, generally we had criteria as to whatpercentage would be the optimum and, so,yes, we would experiment with how much toput in with a certain mix to get the amount ofair retention that we needed. We had littlecontainers where you could put the concretemixed materials in, strike it off and then put acover on it, sort of looked like a pressurecooker thing, if you will, and then you wouldinduce pressure on top of this, and from thatwe can determine the amount of entrained airwithin this container. So we had a littletesting device to check that out.

“. . . with all these mixes we took many, manyconcrete cylinders for testing purposes, and wewould break these cylinders in seven days andtwenty-eight days, and ninety days so that we

could estimate what the strength of that concretewas. . . .”

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Then, of course, with all these mixeswe took many, many concrete cylinders fortesting purposes, and we would break thesecylinders in seven days and twenty-eight days,and ninety days so that we could estimatewhat the strength of that concrete was. Forcertain type structures, there would be aminimum strength of concrete specified, like3,000 psi within twenty-eight days would bethe minimum, let’s say. But these were allaspects of the concrete.

Storey: So from this lab you were specifying differentmixes for different kinds of structures?

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: Did you have any relationship to the Denverlabs in doing this, to the Denver office indoing this?

Chappelear: I think that initially, before we ever got intoconstruction, that we would send them someof these test cylinders and with theinformation as to what went into the mix. They would look at them and analyze themand give us their okay on them.

Storey: Then the other side of this is that you have tohave construction inspectors out there to makesure that our contractor is putting in what we

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specified, is that right?

Chappelear: Yes, that’s correct. We would always have abatch plant inspector there and he wouldcheck out the scales in the batch plant andthen he would supervise the contractor’s batchplant operator in seeing that the right numberof ingredients went into the mix. So we had aman at the batch plant all the time seeing thatwe weren’t being shorted on the cement andthat sort of thing. And then also during eachday’s placement we would take the testcylinders just to make sure that the strength ofthat concrete was up to par and that we weregetting the mix that we were specifying.

Storey: Was that the lab staff doing that?

Chappelear: Yes, yes.

Storey: So were you doing that?

Chappelear: At Fort Cobb we had another man doing that.

Storey: Then what happened once he took samples?

Chappelear: Those samples were brought back to the lab. We generally water-cured our concretecylinder samples and we would break them.

Storey: Tell me what water-cured means.

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Chappelear: Well, we would put them in a vat so that theywould stay wet and cure out and get theirstrength back being exposed to moisture. Where if you set them outside and let themair-cure, you’d get all sorts of different testresults that might not be accurate. But wewould always test cylinders at seven days andwe had a little curve there that we could checkand if they were that strength we couldanticipate what their strength was going to beat twenty-eight days. So we followed thestrength of the materials very closely bytaking these concrete cylinders.

Storey: What happens if they weren’t strong enough?

Chappelear: If they weren’t strong enough we would–well,I can’t recall any cases where we ran into thatproblem. Well, let me think a little bit. Itseems like we did have a bad day. But wewould make the contractor remove thatmaterial and we’d start over.

Storey: Wasn’t that sort of a problem when you’rebuilding a structure? Because you’re buildingup, I presume.

Chappelear: Oh, sure, sure. That would be a majorstructure. But this is something that occurredonly very, very rarely because you’ve got allthese control things going on, your man

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watching the lead ingredients go in there andwatching the mixing and taking tests almostimmediately, like the slump test and things ofthat nature, on the fresh concrete.

Storey: You were doing that in the field, also?

Chappelear: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Each day that this wouldgo on. At least a couple of times a day theywould check it for the air content, check theslump quite often, and so all this testingprocess was ongoing so we never really feltlike we were going to lose control of that. Ireally can’t remember on Fort Cobb Dam everhaving an incident where we lost it.

Storey: Did you ever hear of anything at Fort Cobbwhere there was a conflict with thecontractor?

Chappelear: No, I can’t remember anything of that natureon Fort Cobb, except we certainly had aconflict when he couldn’t excavate thematerials in the borrow area, and I’m sure hegot a price adjustment on that because we hadto relocate and haul all the materials furtherin, and so I think that was a justifiableproblem.

Storey: Reclamation had identified the borrow area?

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Chappelear: Yes, that’s correct. And we told him thematerials were there and it turned out thematerials weren’t necessarily there.

Storey: Did you also work with earthen embankmenttesting?

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: Tell me more about that.

Testing Embankment Material

Chappelear: Well, that was very interesting, the way thatthe Bureau of Reclamation tested the densityin earth embankments. An old boy by thename of Jack Hilf, which I’m sure you’veheard of, Jack’s a very, very well-known manthat’s very knowledgeable in embankmentmaterials. He came up with what he called therapid compaction method, and we used that atFort Cobb. What this amounted to was takingearth samples. You’d go out and dig a–


Storey: You went out and dug a hole in the completedembankment.

Chappelear: Yes, and in this hole, it was a certain size,

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we’d go through about two and a half layersof compacted embankment.

Storey: They were put in maybe in six-inch layers?

Chappelear: And they were put in layers such as you’retalking about there. We would excavate thishole under a steel plate and we’d take all thematerial that we got out of there and put it in aseparate can so we would weigh it and knowexactly how much material came out of there.

Storey: How could you excavate under a steel plate?

Chappelear: There was a hole in the steel plate. Pardonme, I wasn’t clear.

Storey: Oh, it’s a measuring device.

Chappelear: It’s a measuring device.

Storey: I see.

Chappelear: So you would level off the embankment, putthis steel plate down. You had a hole in it andyou would start augering the material out andtesting some of the testing samples. Really,you’re taking a sample of some compactedmaterial. You take this out and put it in a canso that you can take it back to the laboratoryand weigh it. Then also you would take a

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little sample of that material, put it in the ovenand dry it out and determine what themoisture of it was.

Once this hole is excavated, we havewhat we called a sand cone that we put on thetop of this steel plate, and it fit tightly inplace, and we would run a calibrated sandthrough into this hole. And by measuring thesand and knowing what its density was, wecould determine the size of the hole. So thenwe knew what the volume of the excavatedmaterial was, we knew what its wet weightwas, and then once we got the dry back, weknew what its dry weight was, so we coulddetermine the density of that material.

This material that was excavated out ofthis test hole was taken back to the laboratory. We had a small steel bowl there that was, Ican’t remember its exact dimensions, but itwas, I think, a tenth of a cubic foot. We had acollar over the top of that so we could put thismaterial back into this container. Then wecompacted this loose material with a rod thatweighed a certain amount and so many strokesof this rod and you would compact a little bitof this material back in the container. We’ddo this in three lifts, and from this we werecoming up with what was supposedly called astandard compactive effort by sheep’s-foot

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roller. Of course, the Bureau of Reclamationrequired that these earthen materials becompacted by so many passes of a sheep’s-foot roller.

So then you could equate what you gotby putting a standard effort in there to whatthe density of it was in the field. Then Jackhad his rapid compaction method where youwould take some of this material that youexcavated from the hole, add 2 percentmoisture to it, and you’d find another point onthe curve, and then you would add another 2percent moisture to that and you’d findanother curve on it. And from this he had runenough of these soil samples up there in theDenver labs that for a particular-type soil youknew about what the maximum density shouldbe from a standard compactive effort for thatsoil. Then you would compare what you gotin the field to what that standard compactiveeffort was and it would be a certain percentageof the standard sheep’s-foot roller test. Sometimes you’d come up with 102 percent,sometimes you’d come up with 98 percent. There was a minimum amount specified in thespecifications that it would be 98 percent ofthe compactive effort–if it fell below that, yougot the result right back out to the inspector onthe embankment, then tell them to roll thatbaby a little bit further and maybe take

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another test. So that’s how the embankmentcontrol went.

Storey: How quickly are we talking about?

Chappelear: Well, trying to get those tests in and out andback out there in an hour, something like that. Short period of time.

Storey: In an hour?

Chappelear: Yeah.

Storey: So the lab was close to the construction site, Itake it.

Chappelear: Yes, it was.

Storey: What was the lab like at Fort Cobb?

The Lab at Fort Cobb Dam

Chappelear: Well, it was like a double garage, if you will,with a little room added on the back for curingthe concrete cylinders, and so it was relativelysmall. They figured that there would have tobe a caretaker there at the dam, and so one ofthe first things we did was built a residencebuilding with a double garage, maybe a littleextra size added on it, and we used that for ourlab, the garage section.

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Storey: It’s a double garage?

Chappelear: Yeah.

Storey: And how many people worked in the lab? You said you had this man who was runningyou through your paces.

Chappelear: Well, gosh, I’m trying to remember here. Iwould say there was nine or ten of us, I don’tremember exactly, in that lab. It was prettysmall.

Storey: Was Fort Cobb being constructed around theclock?

Chappelear: No. No, I don’t recall that it was. Of course,some of the concrete placements might runinto the dark, and we would have lights forthat, something of that nature. But it wasn’tsuch a big dam that, as I recall, I don’t recallthat we did it around the clock.

Storey: But I guess the lab would have been operatingwhenever they were building.

Chappelear: Yes. Yes. Um-hmm.

Storey: Interesting.

Chappelear: But the contractor would run long shifts, you

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know. It wouldn’t necessarily be an eight-hour day. So we’d have to split the employeesto cover the work.

Storey: Um-hmm. As I recall, you were at Ft. Cobbfor a couple of years.

Determining Permeability of the Embankment

Chappelear: Yes. Another aspect of the lab that I want totell you about. Of course, we were alwaysworried about is the dam going to hold waterand that sort of thing. We would runpermeability tests on some of those earthsamples. So I don’t remember how often weran those, it’s been a number of years backsince I was in this business. But every sooften we would take and excavate anadditional amount of earth, compact it intoanother larger-type cylinder, subject it to awater head, and try and determine what thepermeability was.

Storey: You’d pour water in on top of this compactedearth?

Chappelear: Yes, and subject it to some head or waterpressure, and from that determine what thepermeability of the material was. That wasanother standard earth test that the Bureaudoes.

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Storey: And you were doing all of these tests often?

Chappelear: All these permeability tests, we would setthose up and run them for a couple of weeks,as I recall. But, yes, we did this pretty often,and each month we sent a report in to Denverof all these tests, the embankment and theconcrete. So we had some overview from theDenver labs on this.

Storey: The construction engineer again was?

Chappelear: Fort Cobb was part of the Washita BasinProject, and in the Washita Basin Project wehad both Fort Cobb Dam and Foss Dam, andC. O. Crane was over both of those.

Storey: Spike Crane.

Chappelear: Right.

Storey: Who was his boss?

Chappelear: His boss. Oh, gosh. Who would have beenhis boss? Bellport, I guess.

Storey: The chief engineer.

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: Barney Bellport.

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Chappelear: I think at that time it would have beenBellport.

Storey: The relationship between the Denver officeand the regional office is of interest to me. Did you have any insights at that time abouthow that worked and how that related to theconstruction office?

“. . . the regional office was not all that closelyassociated with the construction office, and itseemed like we had a lot of rapport going on

between the field construction offices and theEngineering and Research Center that didn’tnecessarily have a great deal to do with the

regional office . . .”

Chappelear: Well, to me, the regional office was not allthat closely associated with the constructionoffice, and it seemed like we had a lot ofrapport going on between the fieldconstruction offices and the Engineering andResearch Center that didn’t necessarily have agreat deal to do with the regional office andwhat they were doing. We didn’t see thosepeople all that often and they didn’t have anydirect supervisory capacity. It was all throughSpike and his relationship with the E&RCenter. It seemed like to me that the regionaloffices were primarily concerned with tryingto get some planning going to get some more

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projects authorized to keep the Bureau going,I guess.

Storey: Of course, a lot later, in the late seventies, thatrelationship changed. Did you have anyinsights into that change? And it became theregional office that became responsible forconstruction, and the chief engineer was nolonger responsible for the contractingfunction.

Chappelear: Well, you see, that occurred pretty much afterI was out of construction, but I didn’t see thatas being much of a factor here on the CentralArizona Project. Here again, the regionaloffice I don’t think provided that muchsupervision and direction on the CentralArizona Project, although I think the C-A-Pwas probably a unique project in that it was sobig and there were so many different thingsgoing on, that the project office overwhelmedthe regional office. In fact, it was called theCentral Arizona Projects Office in that anyprojects that were ongoing in Arizona was stillhandled through the local office here. But, ofcourse, the planning aspects of it werecoordinated with the regional office.

Storey: Tell me more about Barney Bellport, if youwould. Did you ever meet him?

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Barney Bellport

Chappelear: Oh, yes. Yes, I met Barney.

Storey: What was he like?

Chappelear: Oh, he was sort of a–well, I guess I thought hewas sort of a character. He wanted to run theshow and he was, I think, a little on thedictatorial side. That was the impression thatI had of him. He was not what I would call asmooth manager type.

Storey: Yeah, I think everybody agrees on that one.(laughter)

Chappelear: Oh, is that right?

Storey: Yes.

Chappelear: Okay. Although I like Barney all right, but Ididn’t like his management style. He wasn’tas smooth as a lot of the Bureau’s managerswere.

Storey: His predecessor was Grant Bloodgood. [Taperecorder turned off]

I was just getting ready to ask youabout Grant Bloodgood.

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Chappelear: Well, when I first started with the Bureau ofReclamation, Mr. Bloodgood was in charge ofthe Engineering and Research Center. I methim and that’s about all I know about him. Ireally don’t know anything about hismanagement abilities, but he seemed like apretty nice man.

Storey: What about Barney Bellport’s successor,Harold Arthur?

Harold Arthur

Chappelear: I had a lot of dealings with Harold Arthur,particularly when I was in the WashingtonOffice. Had a lot of respect for him. He wasa nice man, good manager, and I think did theBureau of Reclamation an awfully good job. Ican only speak quite highly of him.

Storey: Let’s see, after Harold came Bob Jansen.

Chappelear: Let’s see, where did that get in there? I wasthinking of Donald Duck. Do you rememberDonald, he was the assistant there underArthur.

Storey: Yes, he was Harold’s assistant.

Chappelear: I guess he left and never did become–

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Storey: No, he went to Harza eventually.

Chappelear: Right. I was trying to put him in there. Whodid you mention?

Storey: I think it’s Bob Jansen.

Chappelear: Yeah, okay.

Storey: He was brought in by Mr. Higginson.

Chappelear: I never had any real dealings with himbecause I’d left the Washington Office in ‘77,so I don’t know too much about Bob.

Storey: What about Rod Vissia?

Chappelear: Well, I met Rod and I thought he was a verycapable man. Didn’t have too many dealingswith him. My trouble with the Bureau ofReclamation is that as chief of the Division ofGeneral Engineering, I met an awful lot ofpeople and a lot of it was pretty shallowassociations that really didn’t get in there, youknow, and get to meet these people in depth. So my work there in the department wasprimarily of a liaison-type endeavor, youknow.

Storey: Well, let’s change topics, then.

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Chappelear: All right.

Storey: Where were you when you heard the TetonDam had failed?

Teton Dam

Chappelear: Unfortunately, I was sitting in the WashingtonOffice. I was chief of the Division of GeneralEngineering when that occurred.

Storey: But that was on a Sunday.

Chappelear: Oh, oh, okay, you’re wanting to get morespecific.

Storey: Or a Saturday, I’ve forgotten which.

Fontanelle Dam

Chappelear: That was a very shocking thing, of course. Certainly no one was ever anticipating aBureau of Reclamation dam to fail, althoughthat’s not to say that we hadn’t had some closecalls prior to that. I’m sure you’ve been madeaware of the Fontenelle Dam situation, and Ithink that put a big scare into everyone.

Storey: Fontenelle actually had two near failures, Iguess. That earlier one and then a subsequentone in the eighties, I think.

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Chappelear: Is that right?

Storey: Yes.

Chappelear: But the Bureau, of course, was pretty self-confident, maybe overconfident, because wehadn’t had any failures and probably reallymissed the bet there on that foundation atTeton that we put some fine-grain material upagainst a fractured rock and the foundationmaterials weren’t sealed, and they probablyneeded to be sealed with concrete. When youstart dealing with those sandy-typeembankments, you’ve got to be awfullycareful with them. You’ve got to keep themdry.

Storey: So I gather you see this as a design flaw?

Chappelear: Yes, either a case where the people in theEngineering and Research Center didn’t haveenough first-hand knowledge of what therewas in the field–and I found that hard tobelieve that they didn’t go out there and lookat it–or maybe a lack of experience on theconstruction engineer’s part not to recognizewhat he was up against.

Storey: How did people in the Washington Officereact to the news?

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Chappelear: Well, I guess you can say everyone was in astate of shock. We had, of course, all kinds ofhearings following that and all sorts of finger-pointing going on. Let’s see, who was it thathad those hearings? Ryan, Senator [LeoJoseph] Ryan from California. Is it Ryan? Helater went down to South America and gothimself killed. But he was coming down veryhard on the Bureau of Reclamation. I canremember Harold Arthur coming in there totestify, and I can remember Gil Stammtestifying. I went to a number of thosehearings. They were pretty bad. But it’s hardto establish blame for something like thiswhen the construction and engineering is puttogether like it is. There’s so many peoplethat have their finger in the pie and haveresponsibilities and pass on various aspects ofthe design and the construction.

There was other extenuatingcircumstances there, the dam was completed,the farmers wanted their water, the dam wasfilled at a very rapid rate, and maybe if it hadbeen filled at a slower pace, the problemmight have been recognized and the failuremight have been averted. It’s hard–well, Idon’t know, you can find a lot of reasons forthe dam failure and I guess it would be easy topoint the finger, but it’s hard for me to pointit.

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Storey: Changing topics again. They transferred youto Foss Dam. They asked you to transfer toFoss Dam.

Transferred to Foss Dam to Head the Lab

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: To head the lab there.

Chappelear: To head the soils lab and concrete. Well, tohead the lab.

Storey: So you had to change the way you thoughtabout doing your job, I would presume,because you went from a non-supervisory to asupervisory position.

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: What kinds of things were of concern to youin making that transition?

Chappelear: Well, in making that particular transition,there had been a lot of personality conflictsgoing on up at Foss Dam, and Spike asked meto go up there. And as I think I told youpreviously, the wife and I were just gettinglined out where we were getting ready to getour feet on the ground financially. The wifehad a job with the Bureau of Reclamation that

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she had taken and she was going to beworking in the finance office. I think it was atemporary job. So it pretty well shook ourhousehold up to make that move.

But I went up to Foss intending to getalong with everyone there and not get caughtup in the personality clashes that they werehaving. I did pretty well do that. I went upthere and I just walked the fence, tried to treateverybody the way I’d like to be treated andsupervised the lab. The man that was up therein charge of the lab, he said he would work forme, I think I told you this the other day. Hisname was Sam Wallace. Sam said, “Well,you bring Chappelear up here and I’ll workfor him in the lab and not give anybody anytrouble.” And he did that. He was able to liveup to that.

An Incident with One of the Young Engineers

But certainly it was a change for me instarting out to supervise people in doingthings. I can remember one major encounter Ihad with a young engineer that I had workingfor me. They’d been going along there, andthis is not related to lab work, but it’s apersonnel thing. We had had a janitor outthere that had been taking care of sweeping upthe lab and cleaning the latrines and keeping

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everything in a presentable manner, and hecame down sick and he was seriously ill. So Iput up a little roster that, well, “We’re goingto keep the lab clean ourselves,” and here wasthe roster for the guys to do the sweeping outand doing the latrine and all that sort of thing. I had this one young engineer and when itcame his day to do the latrine and whatnot,why, he tells me, “I’m not going to do thatlatrine.” He says, “I didn’t go to school allthis time to get a degree and have to do thatkind of work.” But, you know, it was a littleunusual circumstances.

I had to tell him, “Well, you better getin there and clean that latrine or you’re notgoing to be working for me tomorrow.” I wasgoing to get him out of there.

But, funny how those sort of thingshappen and how some of these kids react tothese situations. I don’t think the young manhad ever been in the service, ever had to cleana latrine, and he felt that was beneath hisdignity. I never felt that way about doing anyjob. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t do orwouldn’t do, and that was sort of myphilosophy. You did what you needed to doto get the job done.

Storey: Did he go clean the latrine?

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Chappelear: Yes, he did. (laughter) He didn’t do a goodjob, but he cleaned the latrine.

Storey: You were there a couple years, also, I believe? About a year, maybe. No, two.

Chappelear: About a couple years there, I guess.

Storey: Then you went to the Canadian River Project.


Storey: I made a note that says you only found sandysoil when you went out with the driller, butyou didn’t tell me why that was important.

Looking for a Sound Bottom on the CanadianRiver in 1959/1960

Chappelear: Well, of course, what I was out there with thedriller trying to do was determine if there wasa sound bottom to the Canadian Riveranywhere along there that someone hadmissed. We were drilling. Primarily we weredoing some degradation studies. We weregoing downstream and trying to determine ifthere was any control there that would stop thedegradation downstream from the dam or ifwe might even find a better place to put thedam. But with the equipment we had, wecouldn’t go very deep, and all across the river

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bottom this fine-grain sand was quite deep.

Storey: So you were looking for a foundation for thedam?

Chappelear: Well, it’s possible that if we’d found anything,it might have wound up that way. We mighthave moved the dam site. But we didn’t findanything, and so the dam was put at whatpresented the best two abutments in the area.

Storey: How do you deal with an issue like fine sand? It sounds to me like all the water would rununder the dam and out through the sand.

Chappelear: Well, if we could have found some controlsthat would have helped us, we might not havehad to have as big a foundation trench as wedid have. So between the two abutments wewound up excavating this rather deepfoundation trench and filling it with morecompetent materials and some materials thatwere impervious so as to cut off the flow.

Storey: So when you say a control, what you’retalking about is something that would keep thewater from going under a dam?

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: Oh, okay. Interesting. Nobody’s talked about

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this before. (laughter) There’re so manytopics that everybody talks about new kinds ofthings.

Chappelear: Yes. Oh, yeah.

Storey: How long were you out there doing that?

Chappelear: Oh, the tail end of ‘59. I think I was probablyout there about three months in the winter of‘59 and ‘60. I believe those are the right datesfor you. But, my, it was cold and miserableout there.

Storey: In the middle of the winter?

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: You, of course, then went into Amarillo andthen you moved–

Chappelear: No, I went to Borger. Borger.

Storey: I mean, you went to–

Moved to Borger, Texas, to Work on Sanford Dam

Chappelear: I moved to Borger. The wife and I moved toBorger to work on Sanford Dam and then latermoved to Amarillo.

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Storey: Borger is in Texas?

Chappelear: Borger, B-O-R-G-E-R, yes.

Storey: Oh, Borger, Texas.

Chappelear: Yeah. Phillip 66, pretty prominent in thattown.

Storey: This was the place where you had to relocateall the pipelines and things.

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: Why did you have to relocate the lines? Whynot just leave them there?

Chappelear: Well, in time, of course, they would have giveus problems. I guess they were rusted out. Some of them would have broke and so thosegas lines needed to be out of the reservoirarea. Probably wouldn’t have–well, it couldhave, I suppose, messed up the quality of thewater, too.

Storey: Did you do anything else besides work on thatpipeline relocation and that sort of thing?

Chappelear: Well, I told you that I did do someexperiments with explosives there in thefoundation and trying to see if we could

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consolidate those.

Storey: To get it to consolidate?

Chappelear: Yeah. And that didn’t work very well.

Storey: How did you test it? I don’t think I asked youthat on Tuesday.

Chappelear: Well, we took density tests before and after todetermine what we had.

Storey: Then you moved to Amarillo?

Chappelear: Right.

Storey: Then you moved to Lubbock?

Chappelear: Right.

Storey: And in Lubbock you were in charge of theconstruction of this 140-mile aqueduct?

Chappelear: Yes, had field office down there.

Storey: Did you ever have any situations arise withthe contractor down there?

Chappelear: Oh, sure, yeah. I’m trying to remember someof the specifics on some of those things, butwe did have this one subcontractor that was

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doing some concrete work for us and we gotinto some disagreements with them on howthings should be done, and actually went tothe E&R Center with some of that to discussit. But one of our big ones was the–


Storey: This is [tape 2 of] an interview by Brit Storeywith Dess L. Chappelear on September the5th, 1996.

Yes, we talked about Cen-Vi-Ro onTuesday and you told me how to spell it, butyou didn’t tell me how to put it together. Is itall one word?

Chappelear: It’s got the three little dashes in there.

Storey: The dashes between the three parts.

Chappelear: Right.

Storey: Harold Arthur told me a wonderful story whenhe was doing construction inspection aboutthe contractor, in effect, suggesting that hemight supplement Harold’s income. (laughter)

Chappelear: Oh, is that right.

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Storey: Did you ever have anything like that?

Chappelear: Oh, yes. I’ve had some contractors treat mevery well, or try to. I think R. H. Fulton wasone of those. He would have bought you if hecould have, you know.

Storey: He was the aqueduct constructor, I believe?

Chappelear: Yes, yes. He was responsible for laying thepipe.

Storey: And he created that excavating machine andthe new technique, too?

Chappelear: Yes. Yeah, and we bought off on that.

Storey: How do these folks approach you about thatkind of thing?

Chappelear: Well, very subtly, I think. I’ve never hadanyone offer me any money or anything likethat, you know, but they want to give youperks, you know. Dinner and this, that, andthe other thing. Of course, at one time Ithought that that was probably acceptable inthe Bureau. I remember when I first startedout, on some of those jobs at Christmas, well,the contractor would give everybody a turkeyor everybody a bottle of booze or somethinglike that. And way back then, no one frowned

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on that too much. What Spike always saidabout that was to contractors, “If you’re goingto do something like that, you do it rightstraight across the line, no favorites,” youknow. I mean, if it’s a little token somethingat Christmas, why that’s okay. And that’sabout all of that I ever saw.

Storey: Interesting. As you moved to Lubbock, onceagain this was a slightly enlarged number ofpeople, I believe.

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: Did that require any changes in the way youapproached the job? Any adjustments in yourthinking in your management style?

Chappelear: Well, I was probably emulating Spike’smanagement techniques, and then I think as Ialso told you, why he sent me to amanagement school that was a good one.

Storey: Yes, you did.

Spike Crane

Chappelear: I really liked the way that Spike did things andI always tried to operate that way. He neverhad two agendas or a hidden agenda, and hewas never secretive about anything, and

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everything was always up front and right outthere. I never knew of Spike ever doinganything that just wasn’t really aboveboard,and I liked the way he operated in his dealingswith people. He was right up front with them. And I tried to be that way with people and Ialways tried to promote the people thatdeserved to be promoted, and when it come tofilling jobs I never played any favorites. Ialways felt that if you were going to have agood organization, you had to have the bestman that was available to you in whateverparticular job you were trying to fill. Andthroughout my Bureau career I always wentwith the best man and never got into thisbuddy-buddy stuff or anything like that.

Storey: Sounds like you saw it, though.

“I got a lot of good treatment from a lot of goodpeople. . . .”

Chappelear: I’m sure that there was some of it in differentareas. I don’t know, I wasn’t subjected to itthat often, I don’t think, so I’m not going toquestion anybody’s calls in my career ladderand in going up the ladder. I got a lot of goodtreatment from a lot of good people.

Storey: But then you went from Lubbock toWashington, D.C.

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Chappelear: Yes, sir.

Storey: Now, that must have been quite a change inperspective.

Moving from Lubbock, Texas, to Washington, D.C.

Chappelear: Yeah, quite a shock.


“. . . it was really an educational thing that I thinkhelped me a lot. It was good to see how the

Bureau of Reclamation operated at that level andsort of a hard thing to put your finger on, but

politics enters into things. . . .”

Chappelear: Well, you know, when I first started out, itwasn’t that bad. In other words, I was so fardown the ladder, I think I was a GS-12 and Igot promoted to 13 to go to Washington, and Iwas sitting there in that Water and LandsDivision, mostly just writing letters, things ofthat nature. But it was really an educationalthing that I think helped me a lot. It was goodto see how the Bureau of Reclamationoperated at that level and sort of a hard thingto put your finger on, but politics enters intothings.

“. . . one of the things about the Bureau that

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concerned me . . . was we had all these projectsauthorized and the funding was never what it

should be in relation to the number of projectsthat we had going. . . .”

I think one of the things about theBureau that concerned me, that we couldn’tseem to do anything about, was we had allthese projects authorized and the funding wasnever what it should be in relation to thenumber of projects that we had going. Inother words, there was always so muchpolitical pressure to get these projects startedby these politicians, on the commissioners,you know, to get projects started, that thecommissioners always had more jobs goingthan we could efficiently build and completein a timely manner. I think that was always aBureau of Reclamation concern. Do youunderstand what I’m talking about?

In other words, if we had a project tobuild and it was authorized and you could getit funded at an optimum rate, put the optimumnumber of people on the job and finish it in atimely manner, you could avoid a lot of wastein personnel and that sort of thing. But wealways had all this pressure to get so manyjobs started, and then this caused moneyproblems and so some of the jobs weren’tfunded and completed in as timely a manner

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as they should have been. And that wasalways a concern of mine, but not one in myposition I could ever do anything about.

Storey: So for political reasons they were authorizingprojects, then you had more projects than theywere giving you money for to efficiently do.

Chappelear: Yes. Well, of course, we always had abacklog of authorized projects, but the nextbig hump in getting a job going was to get itfunded and getting it funded and started,everyone was always trying to get their jobsfunded. So we’d get more of them strung outthan probably we could efficiently handle withthe funds that were available.

Storey: We’re talking about the period here about ‘68to . . .

Chappelear: ‘77.

Storey: This would have been under the presidenciesof, let’s see, who, Nixon?

Chappelear: Yeah, we had Nixon in there.

Storey: And Ford.

Chappelear: Let’s see, when did Johnson leave out?

Storey: Well, let’s see, I’m going to have to figure

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this. ‘61 to ‘65 was supposed to be Kennedy. So Johnson finished ‘65 and would have leftin ‘69.

Chappelear: Yeah. He was there when I first went toWashington, just for a short period.

Storey: Did you see any sort of ups and downs in thefortunes of Reclamation as you changed froma Democratic to a Republican to a Democraticpresidency? Of course, you mentioned the hitlist. So that was a down, I presume.

Chappelear: Yes, that was a downer, yeah. That was thebig downer, was when Carter came in. But hewas unsuccessful in his efforts. We did finishthe CAP.

Storey: Yes. Of course, I think it was altered some,probably, by the hit list?

Chappelear: Well, I don’t think the CAP was altered thatmuch by the hit list. But some environmentalconcerns and Indian concerns altered theproject probably more than anything else.

Storey: At this time you had had regional officeexperience, I believe?

Chappelear: No, no, I was never in the regional office.

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Storey: When you were in Amarillo you were in aproject office?

Chappelear: I was in a project office there.

Storey: So you had had project office experience andthen you went to Washington, you’ had a lotof contact with Denver and then there was theregion in all of this. Who was responsible forwhat? What’s your vision of the way thatworked? Looks to me like everybody wouldbe stepping on everybody else’s toes.

Chappelear: Well, I don’t think that was true. My conceptof it was that you had a regional office thatwas concerned with, first, the projects that hadbeen built within that region. They wereconcerned with the operation and maintenanceof those projects in seeing that they wereoperated as conceptualized. You had theregional office there concerned with furtherplanning within their region and trying to puttogether projects that were feasible withintheir region. So that was a planning effort. Well, of course, the regional offices wereconcerned with getting the projects authorizedand taking them up through authorization.

But then when you got to theconstruction side, more or less, you would putsome people in the field to gather a little

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design data and things of that nature, but whenit became a construction office, I think that themajor responsibility was between the fieldconstruction office or project office and theE&R Center, and I didn’t see that the regionsgot all that involved. So there was really noconflict there that I could see. Of course, youhad your regional engineers, but I don’t thinkthat they stepped in there and were much of aproblem when you got into construction. Inother words, I don’t think that they were allthat involved in it.

Storey: And what about Washington?

Responsibilities of the Various Offices

Chappelear: Washington? Well, I don’t think that theWashington office was all that involved withwhat went on in the regions or theconstruction offices, other than primarilyliaison function, I think. Certainly, no one inmy capacity was going to be telling the E&RCenter what to do as far as their design workor how they should do their construction andthings of that nature. But it was primarilyconcerned with determining what our fieldcapabilities were, what could we accomplishon the ongoing jobs.

“You know, you have a limited capability on these

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projects in that you’ve got a lot of prerequisitesthat you had to get out of the way . . . acquisitionof land . . . preparation of environmental impact

statements . . . acquiring of design data andgetting this to the E&R Center. So you had all

these prerequisites that had to be got out of theway before you could proceed with any

construction . . .”

You know, you have a limitedcapability on these projects in that you’ve gota lot of prerequisites that you had to get out ofthe way and the acquisition of land and thepreparation of environmental impactstatements and the acquiring of design dataand getting this to the E&R Center. So youhad all these prerequisites that had to be gotout of the way before you could proceed withany construction, and you had to know whatthe capability of these different offices were. They didn’t all have the same capability, ofcourse.

In other words, in a given year maybeyou could only build one stretch of anaqueduct because, hey, you didn’t have theenvironmental statements prepared to gofurther. Maybe if you had an environmentalstatement, say, on the main aqueduct cominginto Phoenix from the CAP, for instance, andthen you were going to build the Salt Gila

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[Pumping Plant], you still had all theseprerequisites to get out of the way as far as anenvironmental impact statement, theacquisition of the land, the gathering of thedesign data, and so you might not have thiscapability to go ahead, even though you hadthe project under construction, you werewanting to go with it, but you had to get thesethings out of the way. So there’s a capabilitything that works in there and when you werelooking at all the seventeen Western states andwhat was going on there, you had to prettywell determine what those capabilities were. I’m sure that the Commissioner probably got alot of prodding politically and pressures, youknow, to push different projects by differentcongressmen. I don’t know how much thatentered into it, but determining yourcapabilities is one thing.

“That was why we would have these programconferences annually and try to determine what

these capabilities were. . . .”

That was why we would have these programconferences annually and try to determinewhat these capabilities were.

Storey: I think we’d better wrap up for today, but I’dlike to ask you again whether you’re willingfor the information on these tapes and the

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resulting transcripts to be used by researchers.

Chappelear: Yes, that’s satisfactory.

Storey: Great. Thanks.


Storey: This is [tape 3 of] an interview by Brit Storeywith Dess Chappelear on September the 5th,1996. We’re resuming the interview at aboutthree o’clock in the afternoon.

Licensed Engineer in Texas

After we quit talking this morning, youmentioned that you were a licensed engineerin Texas.

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: There are a lot of people in Reclamation whonever take that step, and I was wondering ifyou would talk to me about why you decidedto do that and what it involved.

Chappelear: Well, I think that you never get the credibilitythat you would like to have unless you goahead and get registered as a professionalengineer. And with it I think that the work

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you do carries a little bit more weight. Itcertainly wasn’t a necessity within the Bureauof Reclamation, but it was something that theshop supervisors and leaders in Reclamationwould like for you to do, and so I went aheadand did it.

Storey: What did it involve to become a registeredengineer? That’s what entitles you to put P.E.after your name, right?


Storey: Professional Engineer.

Chappelear: Right. In my case I never did take a test; I gotit on experience. You know, there’s generallytwo ways that you can get that type of adesignation, and mine was based on numberof years’ experience in the field.

Storey: How many years did it take?

Chappelear: A little over ten years. In my case, I had overten years’ experience when I got it.

Storey: I wanted to ask you, you moved toWashington, I believe it was in ‘68.

Chappelear: Yes.

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Storey: Beginning two or three years before that, westarted seeing a series of environmental lawspassed. I believe the Wild and Scenic Riverswas maybe the first one, and then the NationalHistoric Preservation Act, you get NationalEnvironmental Policy Act in ‘69 and so on. So you were sitting in Washington during aperiod of time when a whole complex of newlaws were being applied to Reclamation’sprojects, and I was wondering if you wouldtell me from your perspective in Washingtonhow that was affecting Reclamation and whatwas going on in Reclamation to adjust to thesenew requirements.

Effects of Environmental Laws and Regulationson Reclamation Projects

Chappelear: Well, it certainly took some adjustments. Ithink it may have slowed things down therefor just a little bit until everyone realized whatyou had to do to get in compliance. In someprojects it actually hurt the project. I knowthat the Bureau of Reclamation wasresponsible for the Navajo Indian IrrigationProject in northwest New Mexico, and as partof that project we had built the Navajo Damon the San Juan River. The dam wascompleted many years before we got aroundto the irrigation portion of the project, and inthat length of time a great fishery developed

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on the San Juan River. Then when we gotready to proceed with the irrigation part of theproject, we were going to put a powerplant inwith the dam and, of course, this had alwaysbeen considered as a part of the project, andall the tubing and stuff was in there, and weawarded the contract to build the powerplantand the contractor got out there and wasstarting to excavate the foundation for thepowerplant and, by golly, theenvironmentalists said, “Whoa, you’re goingto mess up this fishery on the San Juan River.” And they actually stopped us from buildingthat powerplant at Navajo Dam, based onthese laws, which seemed pretty incredulousto me, because here there was never a fisherybefore we built the dam. We built the damand started regulating the flows nicely downthe river, the fishery developed and here theysay, “If you build this powerplant and startfluctuating the flows in the river, you’re goingto mess up the fishery.” Had you ever heardabout that one?

Storey: No, I hadn’t heard about this one.

Chappelear: Yeah, well, that was one of my first go-arounds with the environmentalists and wecertainly lost that one. It was very strange, inmy mind, that something like that couldhappen.

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Storey: Who actually made the decision that wewouldn’t proceed, do you remember?

Chappelear: Oh, I think an injunction was brought againstus in court. Then the bottom line was that thejudge just wouldn’t let us go ahead with it. An injunction was gotten against us to stop usfrom building the powerplant.

Storey: So it was a permanent injunction?

Chappelear: Yes. To the best of my knowledge, thatpowerplant has never been built. Of course,I’ve been out of it for so many years, but Idon’t think it ever happened.

Storey: I remember there was a construction problem. They dropped the gates on the inlet structureor something, down to the bottom on Navajowhen they were constructing it? Would thathave been while you were there?

Chappelear: I don’t remember that. But I might not haveremembered it anyway.

Storey: I think Manny Lopez told me about that,maybe. But I get so many interviews, theybegin to blend together.

Chappelear: Yeah, I can understand that.

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Storey: Were there any other environmental issues,things that came up?

The Plan 6 Planning Process

Chappelear: Well, certainly here on the Central ArizonaProject, here in Arizona, we had one that cameup. I think I was telling you a little earlierabout the long tedious planning process wehad to come up with what was known as Plan6 to take care of the flood control in thePhoenix area and the regulatory storage on theproject.

Plan 6 Was Designed to provide Storage for theCentral Arizona Project and Flood Control for

Phoenix

Then Plan 6, which was prettyuniversally accepted at one time, we had theNew Waddell Dam, which was to provide theregulatory storage for the Central ArizonaProject, and then we were going to raiseRoosevelt Dam, which was going to providefor part of the flood control through Phoenixand also take care of the inadequacies in thespillways on the structures downstream fromRoosevelt Dam on the Salt River.

Then there was another element of theflood control and also to provide additional

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storage, and that was a Cliff Dam was to bebuilt on the Verde River in between twoexisting structures which were not necessarilythat big, but Cliff Dam was going to be amuch larger structure and provide quite a littlebit of additional storage, as well as floodcontrol. Well, the plan was all approved byeveryone and some of this work was started,and then lo and behold, one of theenvironmentalists find there’s a pair of nestingeagles up there in the vicinity of Cliff Damsite and they stopped the construction of theCliff Dam on that basis. Were you aware ofthat one?

Storey: I think I have heard about. . . [Tape recorderturned off]

We were talking about Cliff Dam.

Chappelear: Yes. Well, the environmentalists were able tosquelch Cliff Dam because of the nestingeagles. There was some concern at one timeabout a pair of nesting eagles up here on theNew Waddell Dam site up in the far reservoirarea, but they never got us stopped on thatone, and, of course, that structure has beencompleted.

Bad Effects of Not Building Cliff Dam

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But there’s been some bad effects fromnot building Cliff Dam. Here just two to threeyears ago, we had a pretty good size flood thatcame through the Phoenix area and most ofthe flood waters originated on the Verde Riverand they came down through the FortMcDowell Indian Reservation and through anarea where there had been a pretty good-sizedlandfill. Well, a lot of garbage and junk hadbeen put in this landfill and a lot of it waswashed out into the Salt River and was strewnfrom one end of the valley to the other, andsome of it actually constituted a health hazard. So that part wasn’t too good. It would havebeen much nicer if we could have got Cliffdam built.

“. . . there’s some talk here in the Phoenix area ofbuilding a third runway at Sky Harbor Airport . . .going to have to extend almost out into the SaltRiver area. . . . they’ve forgotten all about our

studies saying that they needed that other dam onthe Verde River to provide flood control to keep

that runway from damage should there beflooding. So it’s going to be interesting to see

how all that works out. . . .”

Also, there’s some talk here in thePhoenix area of building a third runway at SkyHarbor Airport, and that runway, if it’s built,is going to have to extend almost out into the

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Salt River area. I think the city fathers wouldlike to see that runway, but I think they’veforgotten all about our studies saying that theyneeded that other dam on the Verde River toprovide flood control to keep that runwayfrom damage should there be flooding. So it’sgoing to be interesting to see how all thatworks out.

I don’t know whether the Bureau ofReclamation is going to be building any damsin the near future or not. But that was a littlerun-in with the environmentalists.

Storey: Well, while you were back in Washington inthe Water and Lands Division, thensubsequently as the chief of the Division ofGeneral Engineering, did you have any senseof what environmental studies were costingReclamation to implement?

“I really was concerned about some of thearchaeological studies that were done. . . . and

we were doing similar-type studies over and overand over and not finding anything in my mind thatI felt was very significant. . . . It just looked like tome that the archaeological community was doingtheir very best to build little empires and spend alot of money on these types of studies and really

was bleeding the Federal Government toaccomplish this end. ”

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Chappelear: Not nearly as much as I became aware ofthose costs when I got here on the CentralArizona Project. I really was concerned aboutsome of the archaeological studies that weredone. Here we were with building a canalsystem that was taking a relatively small stripof land out from all the way across the statedown to Tucson that was just a few hundredfeet wide, and we were doing similar-typestudies over and over and over and not findinganything in my mind that I felt was verysignificant. If they had been findingsomething that was different and significant inthese different areas, I would have said, wellhey, maybe this a good thing and this moneyshould be spent.

It just looked like to me that thearchaeological community was doing theirvery best to build little empires and spend alot of money on these types of studies andreally was bleeding the Federal Governmentto accomplish this end. You know, they justwanted to perpetuate their little society andwhat they were doing and build up itsimportance, and I think they built it up waybeyond what its beneficial uses were and whatknowledge we gained from it. So a lot ofmoney was spent on these archaeologicalstudies.

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They did about three different types ofthings. They went out and they did sort of areconnaissance study, and then they would dosomething a little more involved, and thenthey actually got into some digs at thesedifferent sites and all of these cost a lot ofmoney. So I felt like a lot of money waswasted when a great deal was already knownabout these Indian tribes and their culture, andI didn’t feel like there was very much that wecould really learn, too much more that wewere going to learn about them from thesestudies, and yet we were really just coercedinto spending a lot of money that I felt wasreally a waste.

Storey: Didn’t we have archaeologists on staff–

Chappelear: Yes, we did.

Storey: –that would be able to protect us from waste?

Chappelear: Well, that should have been the case, but Idon’t know that they were able to stand upagainst these university professors andwhatnot. I think they sort of had us in anawkward position and took advantage of us. Ikept saying this over and over and over, and,of course, none of those people wanted to hearit.

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Storey: Well, I know how they didn’t want to hear it,that’s for sure. Tell me about Roy Boyd, ifyou would.

Roy Boyd

Chappelear: Roy Boyd was a real nice gentleman, real hardworker, very sincere man, and he was veryknowledgeable on the Bureau of Reclamationand what was going on in the Bureau. Hecarried a lot of responsibility there in theWater and Lands Division. I think I told youearlier, he was a torts claim officer and hetook care of all these complaints that dealtwith operation and maintenance of theprojects.

Storey: He was the head of Water and Lands Division,right?

Chappelear: No, no. No.

Storey: I’ve got him confused, then.

Morris Langley and Richard Shunick

Chappelear: No, you’ve got him confused with MorrisLangley. Morris Langley was the head of theDivision and the number-two man under himwas Richard Shunick. I think the name of thebranch was the Operations Branch that we

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were in.

Storey: And this was part of the division?

Chappelear: It was part of the division, yeah. You know, itwas a little subdivision, yeah.

Storey: We talked about this issue in the morning, andthat is, who was responsible for what. Whywould the Washington office have a Waterand Lands Division when the regional officehad a similar thing, the operating projects hada similar thing, and they were fulfilling thoseresponsibilities out in the field?

Why Similar Sounding Offices Were Found in theProject, Region, and Washington, D.C., Offices

Chappelear: Again, much of the work that was done in theWashington office was of a liaison type, andthat office was there to respond to theCongress and their inquires, to respond toOMB [Office of Management and Budget]and others. So, although they may not havedone any actual work, hadn’t been too directlyassociated with some of it, they coordinatedthe responses and being responsible back to acongressman that had a question.

Storey: So they would have, for instance, contactedthe projects or the regions?

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Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: To get information and to coordinate theresponses to Congress and so on.

Chappelear: Yes, yes. So a lot of that happened that way,yes.

Storey: Would this division have also handledenvironmental statements that came toWashington for approval and that kind ofthing?

Chappelear: The Planning Division, I think, initially wasinto the environmental impact statements. See, it’s logical that it would be there, becausethose two sort of go hand in hand. You can’tget one before the other.

Storey: Right. You told me yesterday that you did alot of letter-writing and that kind of thing.

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: This was these responses?

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: Then I believe you were promoted to branchchief or something?

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Became Chief of the Contract and RepaymentsBranch in the Division of Land and Water

Chappelear: Well, I jumped out of the Division of Landand Water and went over into the Division ofGeneral Engineering. I was there in theContract and Repayments Branch, I becamethe chief of it. That was my next move in theWashington office.

Storey: Once again, would you line out what we weredoing in Washington? Is it the same thing,dealing with the Congress?

Chappelear: Well, very much of it was, yes, and dealingwith the Secretary’s office.

Storey: What were some of the repayment issues thatwere coming up at that time?

Repayment Issues

Chappelear: Well, often on these Reclamation projects youhave a project that wasn’t able to meet itsrepayment obligations and this caused a lot ofconcerns. But many of those were met byincreasing the length of their repaymentperiod, modifying the amount that the projectshad to repay.

Storey: That was on the basis of ability to pay?

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Chappelear: Yes, but in the branch that I was in, we wereprimarily reviewing construction contractsand seeing that all the criteria was met prior toawarding the contract, that all the “T”s werecrossed and the “I”s were dotted and that sortof thing. Making sure that the Buy-AmericanAct was being complied with and that sort ofthing when farm materials were being used.

Storey: But this was at a period when the chiefengineer was definitely in control ofconstruction.

Chappelear: Well, this is true, but I think that it was stillthe commissioner’s responsibility when youget to the bottom line as to where theresponsibility was. I think that that office wasthere to make sure that the commissioner’sdictates were being met and that sort of thing,as far as policy and Reclamation instructions. So it was some overview, but not necessarilythe primary responsibility for doing the work.

Storey: So it was basically to protect thecommissioner and to protect Reclamationfrom being embarrassed down the line or fromhaving made an error, I guess.

Chappelear: Well, partially that.

Storey: Was it often that you would find a situation

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that required some correction?

Chappelear: No, it wasn’t often, no, but occasionallysomeone would come up with something thatwasn’t in accordance with the Reclamationinstructions.

Storey: How long were you doing that as branch chiefthen?

Chappelear: Oh, just a couple of years until K. K. Youngretired in the latter part of ‘73. So I went inthere in ‘68 and was–I don’t rememberexactly how long I was in the Land and Wateroperations part of it, but a couple of yearsthere. Then a couple of years in the secondjob, and then when K. K. retired why, then Igot his job.

Storey: So you were there maybe three or four years?

Chappelear: Well, I was there–

Storey: As division chief, I mean.

Chappelear: Oh, as division chief, yes, that was closer toprobably four years.

Storey: Didn’t we talk yesterday about the shift ofresponsibility from the chief of engineer to theregional offices for construction, or did that

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happen a little later when you were actuallydown in C-A-P?

Chappelear: Actually, I think that that happened a littlelater, because that responsibility just neverexisted anytime that I was in a regional office. But the responsibility for the construction, likeI was telling you, still was primarily betweenthe E&R Center and the project’s office onthis project. I don’t know whether it was justbecause this was such a large unique one ornot, but I don’t think that we operated quitelike anybody else was operating.

Storey: I think we talked about the project managers. Is there anything else that we should talkabout? You were responsible for theEnvironmental Division, the PlanningDivision, the Lands Division, OperationsDivision, and the Distribution SystemsDivision.

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: You know, this is a fairly large project. Interms of money spent, it’s the largest ever ofthe Reclamation projects.

Chappelear: Gone a little over three billion now.

Storey: What kind of special issues came up with

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distribution systems? Was this a typicalReclamation project or did it deviate from thenorm?

Chappelear: Well, I don’t think that it was typical at all,because there was so much money involvedand these distribution systems going from themain aqueduct were covered under separatecontracts with these irrigation districts, calleda 9D contract. So there was a lot of criteriathat had to be met to get those loans, and thatmoney had to be made available. But like Isay, some of that really hasn’t turned out toowell on the Central Arizona Project. Many ofthese irrigation districts got into troublefinancially and are still hurting, although someirrigation water is being sold. This year here,I think, marks the first year that they’ve goneup to a million acre-feet of water distributedby the project, maybe a little over a million. Ithink they were saying they were going to [go]over it. And [they] still got a ways to go toreach the full capability of the project, but it’sapproaching it pretty fast.

Storey: I understand they’re heavily subsidizing–thatthe Central Arizona Water ConservationDistrict’s heavily subsidizing a lot of thewater deliveries.

Chappelear: I don’t know how much they’re doing that,

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but I’m sure that they would like to movesome water.

Storey: Now, you came down here as assistant to Mr.Hallenback, is that correct?

Chappelear: No, assistant to Richard Shunick.

How Richard Shunick and Chappelear Split theResponsibilities in the Office

Storey: With Mr. Shunick, how did you split up theresponsibilities for who did what?

Chappelear: Really between Dick and I, we didn’t havethings separated all that much, and verballywe split up some of the work. Like the E-E-Ostuff, he didn’t want any part of that, and thatbecame my responsibility. A lot of the thingsdealing with the construction side of it and inareas where I had had work experience, whyhe let me discuss with the newspapers and allothers, some of those things.

How Ed Hallenback and Chappelear Split up theResponsibilities

But when Hallenback came along, hewanted more clear-cut division of powers, andso we drew it up very formally when he camealong.

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Storey: And is that when you became responsible forthe divisions and so on?

Chappelear: Yes.

Storey: When you came to this position as assistantproject manager, what kind of a grade levelwould that have been?

Chappelear: A fourteen, GS-14.

Storey: Was that the same as the division chief inWashington?

Chappelear: No. No, I had a GS-15 in Washington, andyou may recall, (Storey: I think you did, nowthat you mention it.) I think I mentioned thisto you, that I agreed that I would come backdown here as the assistant project manager if Icould bring the salary with me that I had, andthat was agreeable with everyone, so that’s theway we worked it.

Storey: Right, you did mention that.

Chappelear: My grade level was a GS-14, but I didn’t loseany money to come back down here.

Storey: You must have liked it; you stayed after youretired.

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Chappelear: Yes. Yes, like Arizona very much, yeah. Nice place to be.

Storey: Is there anything else we ought to talk about?

Liked Working for Reclamation

Chappelear: Well, I don’t know, I’ve been away from it solong, it’s hard to recall some of these things. Ithink that the Bureau of Reclamation is reallya good organization to work for, and I thinkwhat primarily made it that way was that wehad a lot of professional people within theBureau and we had very clear-cut objectives,and this is something that a lot of bureaus andagencies don’t have. In the Bureau it wasvery, very well-defined what you were tryingto do, either in a piece of legislation or whathave you, and I think that that helped makethe Bureau a real good organization to workfor. You’ve got to have clear-cut objectivesand I think that’s what makes the Bureau ofReclamation a little bit unique in governmentagencies.


Storey: Let me ask you again whether or not you’rewilling for this tape and the resultingtranscripts to be used for research purposes.

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Chappelear: Sure.

Storey: Good. Thank you very much.

END SIDE 2, TAPE 3. SEPTEMBER 5, 1996.END OF INTERVIEWS.

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