April 18, 2019 • 41 mins
And now for something completely different. Just kidding – tune in to hear the thrilling conclusion of America’s most amazing public works project in the 20th century.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, This is Chuck Hello, New York. Specifically, I'm
coming out there next week, next Tuesday, to perform as
a part of UH, the We Knows Parenting podcast. My
buddies Beth Newell and Pete McNerney. Pete, He's Peter. What
am I talking about? Uh? They're performing live We Knows
Parenting for the first time at Little Fields in Brooklyn
(00:23):
on Tuesday night, and I'm gonna be there. I'm coming
up for this. I'm gonna take the stage with them.
I'm gonna talk kids, and it's a good chance to
uh to say hi. Emily is gonna be there to everyone,
So come on out if you are in the New
York area Tuesday. That's this Tuesday at Little Fields in Brooklyn.
Go to We Knows Parenting dot com and buy tickets
(00:44):
there and UH, I would love to meet you. So
come on out and say hello. Welcome to Stuff You
should know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w.
Chuck Brian, there's Jerry over there. And this is part
(01:06):
due the sequel of Hoover Damn. Let's find out what happens.
So I think the last thing I said was they
poured the last bucket of concrete on and the end,
so let's do listener mail. Okay, I'm getting definitely worth
(01:26):
the two part um. Okay, Chuck. So they poured the
last bucket of concrete, they grouded everything off, and all
of a sudden, you now have one solid sheet of damn, Hoover, damn,
and um. At the bottom, it's much much wider than
it is at the top. It's like six plus feet
at the bottom, that's how wide it is. At the
(01:48):
top is forty five, which still feels substantial. And indeed
it's enough to have a two lane highway going over it,
and for a very long time, for sixty something years,
I've leave that was how you got um from Arizona
to Las Vegas. You had to drive over the Hoover
dam on top of it, which seems just about as
(02:10):
bone headed as it gets. But I guess they were.
They were They really wanted the gift shop money from
everybody they could get their hands on. Yeah, it was
kind of cool to have been forced to do that,
because whether you liked it or not, you were gonna
see an amazing thing. Um. But eventually, like you, like
you were hinting at, traffic just picked up and picked
up and they're like, you know what, this isn't great
(02:31):
to have all these cars um driving over this thing
every day. So let's build a bridge. You know what
we'll do. Let's build the longest concrete gravity arch bridge
on in North America. Which is appropriate because again, if
you take a gravity arch bridge and lay it on
its side, you've got basically the Hoover Dam right there. Yeah.
So it spans over a thousand feet about a thousand
(02:51):
sixty feet of the Black Canyon, just south of the
old Route, nine feet above the canyon. Have you been
to this bridge? Yeah, it's cool, Like I have driven
over that bridge since I visited the damn itself in
ninety six. And you get a great view from up there, yes,
you do. You also get to experience the most terror
(03:13):
you can possibly experience on a bridge because the railing
is like less than five ft tall. There's no big barrier,
there's no nuts, there's no nothing. It's just void right
on the other side. It's so scary. But yes, the
view is is unparalleled. I don't think you can walk
across it, though, can you Yes, you can, Yes, I
(03:36):
had no idea. Oh yeah, there's a no, there's a
pedestrian walkway and the railing is less than five ft.
I didn't notice that. Oh yeah, that's that's why you
weren't terrified. You you walk across this thing and it
is so scary. Oh my gosh, it's scary. But it's
really really amazing, like the most amazing views of Hoover
dam Um. Prior to the bridge opening. We're all done
(03:59):
like from about this vantage point by helicopter. Now, any
smoke can just walk out there, just park and walk
and and see it yourself, and it's pretty amazing. You
see all sorts of rainbows. We saw a bunch of
rainbows while we were there, because the water is flowing
out of the damn outlets and um, the sun shining
and there's just rainbows. Like you can't you can't throw
(04:19):
a rock and not hit a rainbow around there. Well,
Bob mould would end up writing a great song, uh,
after being inspired by a visit. There a rainbow connection. No,
he Bob Moulden remember Sugar sure and Whisker do. Yeah,
but Sugar was his band in the early nineties. And uh,
he had a great song called Hoover dam I didn't
not standing on the edge of the Hoover Damn. That's
(04:43):
such a good bob mole. So March one, believe it
or not, they finished this thing under budget two years
ahead of schedule. Um, yeah, I want to say something
about that real quick. Remember they called Frank crow the
the guy who was running was the project manager for
the whole thing. Crow. They called him hurry up Crow's right.
(05:07):
So he um made the company eight million dollars. Remember
how they bid the thing out at just twenty four
grand over cost. By coming in under budget and that early,
they saved eight million dollars. So he was he was
quite the hero for the corporate overlords, old slow money bags.
(05:28):
Crow right. So finally the moment comes, and I can't
imagine what this must have been like, but they were
able to release that Colorado River that had been on hold,
we'll not on hold, but flowing in a different place
all those years, back into that original route. And all
of a sudden you have Lake Mead, the Lake Mead Reservoir.
(05:51):
It is um a hundred and ten miles stretching a
hundred and ten miles upstream from the Hoover Dam and
attracts ten million people a year two water, ski and
sun and boat and do fun things. Yeah. Because again
it was the designated as the nation's first national recreation area, recreation, recreation, recreation. Uh,
(06:18):
it's the biggest reservoir in the world and um, which
is saying something because there's some gigant or reservoirs out there. Yeah,
this one is one point to four trillion cubic feet.
They so there's so much water in their chuck that
they measure it by acre feet, which is how much
water it takes to flood an acre a square acre
(06:40):
of land. And there's something like twenty eight million acre
feet in in Lake Mead at its capacity. That's a
lot of flooded acres. As a matter of fact, it's
like twenty eight million square flooded acres of water right there.
That's a lot of water. Yeah, And like me decide
(07:02):
we should probably go over some of them, some of
the stats for Hoover Damn itself, because it's it's done now.
It's the um at the time was the tallest damn
in the world by more than three feet um seven
six ft from the canyon floor. And now it is
the second tallest still the second tallest concrete gravity damn
(07:26):
in the United States, behind the Araville Dam in California,
which I don't know if you looked at that, but
it's no Hoover dam Oh is it schlubby? I mean
it's fine. Looks like a big giant slipping slide. It's
got this huge ramp. Yeah, it's fun. But again, Bob
Mule didn't write a song called the Araville Damn. Can
I hear a little snippet of it? If you have
(07:49):
no no, no, no no, just just play the first
one again and I'll do this. Aura Ville's so good
Today Hoover Dame is still uh second in the country
in power production and ranks eleventh in the world in
power production. It's second in the country still for power. Yeah,
(08:13):
for power production. Wow, that's that's that's crazy and the
biggest until nine when the Grand Coulee hydro electric Dam
in the Columbia River in Washington State took it over, right, right,
But so that there and there's still one and two
I guess then is the thing that's right. But what's craziest,
So the hydro electric power from the Hoover Dam generates
(08:35):
like four billion kilowatt hours annually. Okay, that that must
be like enough to power the entire US. That's actually
not the case at all. Um, it's about I believe
quarter or a five of the annual power consumption of
just Los Angeles County, just Los Angeles. Um, it's about
(08:59):
a of it, but so sure, and it is having
a significant impact. I read that if they stopped producing
electricity at the Hoover Dam, everyone in California and the
Southwest power bills would go up by like a month.
That's pretty substantial. Um, but it's it's still I'm I'm
(09:20):
I guess I'm saying like I'm surprised it's the number
two guy on the block. Still. Yeah. They the way
they distribute it to is, Um, California gets about almost
fifty of the power. Uh, Nevada, Nevada, they both get,
and then Arizona gets about close to n Did they
(09:40):
split that yeah, Nevada, Nevada. Yeah, Yeah, but that's only
fifty three or fifty seventy three. That's still not I
wonder where if the rest where the rest goes downstream
the power? Yeah, well no, always so you're talking about
the power of the water. The power. Oh, I don't know,
because I wonder how much of that operates the damn itself.
(10:05):
Can't be that much. I mean, that's a lot left over.
I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not really sure. So, um,
regardless of where that that phantom electricity goest Chuck, I
want to talk about another extraordinarily foresightful um part of
this project. Do you remember when they diverted the river
in those four tunnels around the damn project site? What
(10:29):
what are you talking about? Well, let's go back. Well,
we'll go back and replay the entire episode real quick,
and they'll be in there somewhere. So, so they diverted
the river so they could build the dam, and they
saved those those tunnels. They didn't just like cover them
up and say forget you, we don't need you anymore.
They said, no, no, no, we can actually use you
(10:49):
in the future. So one on each side is now
called the penn stock. It's a it's they they've been
um encased in steel and then um narrow rowed from
fifty ft to thirty ft in diameter, which is still
pretty substantial, and they use those to send water from
the lake mead to the power station turbines on either side,
(11:13):
the Nevada side and the Arizona side, and that's where
the hydroelectric power is is generated. So they use the
diversion tunnels to generate the hydroelectric power. Now, yeah, it's
amazing the water falls into these things. Uh go down
about five feet into this power station, which, by the way,
part of the tour is you get to go down
into the bowels. We miss that, which is kind of neat. Um. Yeah,
(11:39):
you didn't about the word bowels just turned you off,
So that's why did um. So it falls about five
feet into the power station. Uh, it's flowing here at
about two thousand cubic feet between two and three thousand
cubic feet per second, And anyone who knows what hydro
electric power means, all you're doing is using that water
(11:59):
to spin turbine and connect that to a power generator
and all of a sudden, Arizona, Nevada, and California are
getting juice, right, which is pretty ingenious because if you
think about it, when when that water is flowing from
Lake me down these um these pen stocks to the turbines,
(12:20):
they're not using any pumps or anything like that. It's
all just gravity um sending it over like a six
hundred feet drop and what did you say? It was
like two thousand to three thousand cubic feet per second,
So that chuck is a lot of water. That is
a tremendous amount of water, so much so that converted
(12:41):
into big Max per second. You're talking eighty nine thousand,
three hundred and sixty seven big Max per second if
you're moving water to two thousand cubic feet per second.
And that's actually accurate based on the dimensions of big
MACA did the calculation. That's how many big Max would
be flying past you in a second if if it
were big Max instead of water they were sending down
(13:04):
there the other stat which staggers me and uh, because
I was thinking, like, there's no way Julia actually figured
out the horse power of this whole thing, and she
did well, she found someone who did, and this thing
can crank out almost three million horsepower combined. I know
(13:29):
that's a lot of horse power, but I'm just trying
to like put it in other terms, like how many
how many trains is that We'll just think about standing uh,
in the middle of a desert and seeing three million
horses charging at you. It's a lot of horsepower. That's
a lot of horses. It is so the way that
the water gets from Lake Mead down to the turbines,
(13:52):
I mean, it's all very much control. And the way
they control it is if you ever go to the
Hoover Dam, just on the Lake Mead side of the dam,
there these four towers that rise out of the water,
and those towers have gates that can be opened and
closed to let water in. And those are the gates
that let the water and that send it to the
pen socks down in into to power the turbines and
(14:15):
the power stations, apparently to the tune of three million
horse power. It is amazing. Again, all of this if
you step back and just kind of look at it
as a kid, you're like, yeah, put a hole here
to make the water go there, to make the turbine spin.
It's really simple in a lot of ways. But the
amount of ingenuousness it took to actually execute it, that's
(14:36):
where the chef's kiss lines. All right, let's take a
break here and uh, we're gonna come back and talk
about uh spill ways right after this. Alright, chuck. So
(15:19):
they used two of the four diversion tunnels to feed
the turbines to generate hydroelectric power that leaves to other ones.
And I know they didn't just forget about those what
are they using those four? And this is sort of
the final component here, because what they had to do was, Um,
I mean, when this thing is working great, which it
(15:41):
almost always has, we'll get to that in a second. Um,
everything's awesome. People are getting power, people are waterskiing on
Lake Mead. Um, people are getting water, Crops are getting water,
cows are drinking water. Everybody's happy. But they did have
to think about the fact that the Colorado River used
to be quite a bear and may get angry again
one day, or this thing may fail one day. So
(16:04):
we need to think about what happens if something does
go wrong, whether it's a flood or the system breaks
down or something. So they thought ahead and they they
set up what we're called spill ways. They can actually
divert once again, all that water into those two outer tunnels,
uh that are now referred to as spill ways. But
(16:25):
this is downstream, right right, so not the upstream tunnels
that are being used UH for the flibbertyg of its.
Have you ever seen a fish ladder? Surely you have, Yeah,
we've I think we've even talked about them on something before. Yeah.
That's basically like an upstream spill way. Yeah, okay, So
(16:45):
this is the opposite that's sending it down, and it's
it's it's the exact same principle and almost the exact
same design as that little overflow hole that you have
in your sink. So like you you can't flood your
bathroom because eventually, if that water or level hits that hole,
it's just going to go into the hole and down
the drain. Anyway, this is the exact same thing. So
(17:06):
they utilize those remaining two um diversion tunnels as the spillways,
and they didn't lower them at all. Remember they reduced
the other ones to like thirty ft from fifty ft.
These are still fifty ft spill ways lined with like
three ft of concrete. But they follow very similar trajectories
where you know, the water hits a certain level on
(17:27):
like a flood or whatever, and it goes through these
spill ways and then it drops several hundred feet I
think six hundred feet, which is a lot for a
lot of water to drop. It starts to pick up
a pretty pretty high velocity, and then it it all
spills out of these gates a little further downstream beyond
the hydroelectric plants, and everybody's saved and happy and nothing. No,
(17:51):
no waters ever meant to go over the top of
the Hoover Dam. If that ever happened, that would be
colossally bad. It's never designed to do that. Um, it
probably never will do that. Even if humans suddenly just
vanish overnight, the spillways would probably still work. But um,
that's what it's designed for. Is designed to just get
(18:12):
rid of that water and reroute it, basically like they
rerouted the Colorado River, but this time they're rerouting it
around the power stations which would be swamped with that
much water. Yeah, and they don't let it's it's not
like they were like, all right, if this gets within
like three or four feet, we're gonna take action. If
it gets to within they said it at twenty seven feet.
So if the water rises for any reason to within
(18:34):
that twenty seven feet to the top of where those
cards are driving, the spillway gates open up, uh, and
it diverts that water and the dam uh is not
able to breach, which like you said, would be catastrophic.
It let's out a big huray uh. And the good
news is the system, that outlet system has never failed
(18:56):
uh and it's only had to be used twice once
for the test in one and then in nineteen eighty three.
It was actually a flood that got within that caused
that river to go up within twenty seven feet and
they opened up that spillway, which I imagine there was
I mean, it was probably kind of scary, but they
were probably some engineers that were pretty excited to get
(19:18):
to use those spillways finally, Yeah, because they I mean,
you would have had to have been an old time
or to have been there for the nineteen forty one
test by the time three came around. So I'm sure
all these people wanted to see this because they they
had never seen it work before, and they also wanted
to know if it did work. And it definitely worked.
I mean it was it wasn't a drill like one.
(19:39):
It was a straight up flood like this is what
it was designed for, and it worked just fine. Yeah.
But both times during the test and during that flood,
those spill ways suffered some some damage. So let's talk
about the um the failures that have happened over the years. Right.
So in those those first few years, when everyone was
still kind of biting their nails a little bit, there
(20:00):
were there were a couple of problems. Um Air bubbles
formed in these spill ways and seepage, like water started
seeping under the base of the dam, which is not
good at all. No, and those are actually two different things,
so both we'll start with the the um air bubbles, right.
So that's that's called cavitation. And when the spill ways
(20:22):
were used, both in that ninety one test and in
the actual flood, when that water, that huge, huge amounts
of water fell, you know, six hundred feet down to
the elbow of the spill way that led it the
rest of the way out to the river um when
it hit, when it impacted. By that time, these things
(20:45):
called cavitations, a little like bubbles of vapor had formed
in the water column. And these things were so strong
that when they collapsed they had enough force that they
could like shatter concrete. So when this the spill test
was done, the spell way test, and then when the
flood was over, and the spell ways were turned off.
They went and investigated. There were huge chunks of concrete missing.
(21:08):
The water had just sheared it away like it was nothing.
And the cavitation is still not really fully understood. It's
part of like a really um infrequent unusual occurrence like that,
like water typically doesn't flow that fast on Earth over
you know, a man made structure, so it's not like
something we have to worry about. But they figured out
that if you insert aer raiders or air ducts something
(21:32):
to insert air into that water to kind of lessen
the blow kind of pad or pillow the the impact
of those cavitations collapsing, it can protect concrete. And so
after one they didn't really know what they were doing
after somebody had figured out aeration by that time, and
so they installed them right afterwards. And as far as
(21:54):
I know, they haven't tested it to see if it works,
but in other places it's been shown to work, so
I think gets a pretty safe bat that if those
overflow spill ways have to be used again, they probably
won't cavitate because of the aeration that was inserted into
the spill ways. Now, yeah, well, I actually saw in
forty one they knew that they could do this with
(22:14):
air ducks, but the government wouldn't pony up for the money.
Oh is there right, Yeah, they denied the funds. And
uh it took until that flood of eighty three when
it happened again, when the government was like, all right,
we'll pay for this stuff. Fine, Hoover's ghost came out
for the don't get involved. It's not the government's job
(22:36):
to pay for broken concrete. So, um, this seepage was
the other was the other sort of engineering failure, and
we should, you know, we need to point out that
this thing is performed really, really well, Like none of
these failures broke the damn. You know, that's a really
good point, and I think it's definitely worth pointing out.
Like the spill waves those were huge you know where
(22:57):
where and tear that that probably shouldn't have happened in
probably won't again. But yeah, the whole system still worked. Yeah.
So if you have a damn like this, Um, the
stability of this whole thing relies on keeping all that
water out. So any seepage under the base of that
damn is not good. It's gonna cause uplift pressure that's
(23:18):
gonna shift the whole foundation, and this grout uh basically
was was failing. Um, a grout curtain is going to
prevent the seepage. So they were pressure injecting all this
grout into these holes trying to fill cavities, but it, uh,
it was not and they were getting some seepage in there. Well,
they did a really poor job of geological exploration before
(23:43):
they ever started the project. Yeah, that was the main
issue there. So, like the same grout that they they
introduced into those cooling pipes after they were finished building
the actual damn itself, they were they were introducing that
into these holes they drilled to kind of fill those cracks, crevices, faults,
all this stuff that's in the bedrock. Because normally, when
(24:03):
the Colorado rivers flowing chuck, it's like it's fine, it's
allowed to keep going and it doesn't try to get
anywhere aside from the river bed. But when it runs
into the dam, then it's got issues. The water wants
to go somewhere, right, Yeah, that's what water does. It
wants to go somewhere, So it starts to find those
little cracks and crevices and faults, and when it fills
(24:24):
up enough of them, it can actually lift up the dam,
and that's what it was doing, it was lifting up
the dam. So they went back and drilled more holes
and added even more grout and basically created this barrier.
So you've got the barrier that's the dam, and then
you have the barrier that's this grout reinforced bedrock, you know,
hundreds of feet down into the earth. So now the
(24:47):
water just gives up and does what it's told. Yeah,
I love that they they really went overboard there and
like an additional three feet underground with this grout. But
imagine being like the dam is actually lifting up, it's
starting to float. That is the exact opposite of what
you want to go on with your damn. Yeah, for sure,
(25:09):
because apparently on the on the face of the damn,
the um upstream face, the water pressing up against it
like meat, is over a hundred miles long. It's an
enormous amount of water and it's being held back by
this one slab of concrete. And I guess I think
Julius said it was like forty five thousand pounds per
(25:31):
square feet of pressure pressing up against the damn at
all times. So yeah, that that um that's a that's
just Harry if you think about it, especially then if
you start to think about the that amount of that
amount of concrete like being lifted up by the water
and it's just basically being moved out of the way,
and they had to stop it in time. Alright, folks,
(25:53):
we're gonna take our last break. We're gonna come back
and finish up with part four, Part two of Hoover
Damn right after this. All right, we're gonna bring it
(26:34):
home here with um or or we could keep talking
about it forever, uh, with a little bit on how
um the Hoover Damn just really changed the United States
and especially the Southwest. UM Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the
damn on sept and man insult to injury. Former President
(26:57):
Herbert Hoover was not even on the guests list to
come from and see that dedication. No, do you mene
like four years after and he was the guy who
was the first champion of the whole thing too, I
mean like it was his project for sure. So uh,
that area, that region, it really changed everything, um aside
(27:17):
from Boulder City becoming a real place, which is kind
of neat in Vegas growing. The whole region was allowed
to flourish, um because well one big reason it's because
they tamed that Colorado River. No more flooding, right, Um,
So no more flooding meant that you could actually have
like a stable agricultural um industry, right yeah the area.
(27:42):
It says here the region's crops and livestock account for
and of the entire country's production. Yeah, and they grow
so much like lettuce and cilancho and stuff that that
regions now called America's salad bowl. Um. It's a huge, like,
it has enormous amounts of production, and it never would
have gotten to that that point had the Hoover damn
(28:04):
not produced like a steady, reliable supply of irrigation and
um done away with flooding. Like there's no more. There
hasn't been a single flood from the Colorado River that's
affected any of the land in the area since the
Hoover Dam came online. You know, when I lived in
Yuma and I waited tables at Julianna's patio cafe, there
(28:24):
was this this dude, I can't remember his name, but
this one guy that would bring in a bunch of
big money guys uh to eat every now and then,
like six or eight of them for these business dinners.
And he was a lettuce guy. Oh yeah, okay, And
I just thought it was so funny growing up in
Atlanta and never you know, thought about it. But he
all he did was grow let us in. If he
(28:47):
came in with his you know, six or eight buddies,
like you had to shut down and take that table
only like he expected you to only wait on your
table right. Well, there's some real lettuce in it for you,
Oh there was. It was he a good tipper because
a lot of times those guys are not well. It
was he always had a party big enough to where
(29:07):
the tip was included. Um. And he would usually give
you give you a little lettuce on top of that.
That's nice. Literally, here's a piece of romaine for you.
It's good for you, kid, and spank you on the
bottom as you were walking away down. Um. So the
Hoover Dam changed everything, like Uh, places like Tucson, Arizona
(29:28):
would not even have been allowed to happen. Uh in
Las Vegas and l A booming like it did, um
thanks to the Hoover Dam. Like you said, no flooding
tons of production and everything is under control. One thing
they did have to worry about, well, we'll talk about
what they are worrying about now in a minute. But
(29:48):
one thing they did worry about then and then, like
in World War two and again at nine eleven, was
the fact that it's a terror target because it so
many places rely on this for water, the irrigation. That
if terrorist organization took out the Hoover Dam especially I
mean to be bad anytime, but especially in World War two,
it would have been catastrophic. Yeah, so I guess nineteen
(30:12):
thirty nine, the Mexican government let the American embassy in
Mexico City know, hey, we just heard that the Germans
are planning on bombing Hoover Dam, and UM America was
like what, And they put up all these new safeguards
and got military police to patrol the area. They installed
floodlights on Lake Mead, they put up a steel net
(30:34):
so you couldn't get anywhere near the um, anywhere near
the dam on the Lake Mead side because remember, I mean,
people are like boating and recreating on this um. So
they had to kind of keep people away from the
damn for the first time. And but they still kept
going on. You could still go visit and everything, and
then Pearl Harbor happened. Um, and they were like damns
closed and they closed the damn to the public for
(30:57):
the duration of the war, I think until like the
end of ninety five they finally opened it to the
public again. All because of the dirty Nazis. Yeah, man,
and they um they did. The damn itself actually had
its own police force. Um. The Army of course came
in there to help out as well. But it was
a pretty big deal because not only are you disrupting
(31:17):
water and maybe flooding the valley, but the power supply
to southern California. There was a lot of aviation manu
still is a lot of aviation manufacturing in Southern California
and for and I think that's what the Nazis were
really after, to disrupt the power supply to the aviation industry. Yeah,
because at the time America wasn't even in World War
(31:39):
Two yet, but we were helping the British with the
aviation stuff we were building. So they were trying to
strike at the heart of British capabilities by blowing up
the Hoover Dam. There, unexpected the Nazis want to blow
up the Hoover dam and the US is like, what
did we do? We're not even in this so called
World war, right, Oh yeah, helping them? It's all right,
(32:00):
I got you. We're still not going to let you
do it, but now we understand. Uh. And then, of
course after nine eleven it was, um, there was a
lot of fear that that could be a potential and
it still limbs as a potential terrorist target. Well that
was one reason why they built the bridge, the bypass bridge,
was They're like, you know, this is just too vulnerable
(32:20):
letting people drive over it. And so from what I understand,
either after um the German bomb plot became evident or
after nine eleven, and I think it was after nine
eleven until that bridge opened up, when you drove over
the Hoover damn you had to wait and it would
happen and I guess shifts, and you would be escorted
(32:42):
across by the police um in groups of cars, and
then you'd be you'd make your way to the other
side and they'd be like keep going, don't even look back,
or we'll arrest you. Um. And then that's how you
got across until they finally opened the bypass, which must
have been um up, but there are a lot of delays. Yeah,
probably so in that situation. So the current threat, aside
(33:05):
from that looming terror threat, is the fact that, uh,
there have been about sixteen years of drought in that area,
and uh it's scary. Man. Lake meat is not the same.
I mean it is what it like a hundred and
fifty feet uh lower than it used to be then
(33:26):
it wasn't two thousand and thirty feet. I mean that's amaze.
That's a huge, huge drop. Yeah, there's like a bathtub
ring high water mark. Now it's just the discoloration along
the canyon walls where you can see where it used
to be, and it's really significant. And the problem is
when they built the dam, they built it so that
the the gates that um allow water down to the
(33:51):
pen socks to the hydro electric plant they cut off
at a certain height. After that the water is too
low to flow through the gates, and in you have
no hydro electric power. Same thing with the pipes that
pump water out to Las Vegas and Los Angeles and
Tucson and everywhere else that gets water. Um, they're at
(34:11):
a certain height too, so once they I think, once
the water level hits like eight ft, there's no more
water that can be drawn out. And they actually got
around this by creating a new low level pumping system
to where they came in and went under the under
Lake Mead and tapped into it and now just like
(34:34):
a bathtub drain at the bottom of a bathtub, there's
a pumping station so that that now they're not like, Okay,
we have eight water we can't get to to drink
from any longer. Now they're like, no, we can. We
can get to all the water we need to for
um for drinking, which is a huge relief. That's a big,
big deal that they were able to do this. But
(34:55):
at the same time, everyone's still very much aware that
they're like, we still have issues, like we're losing water
through evaporation and from um, you know, lower and lower
snow accumulations up in the Rockies where all this water
comes from in the first place. Like there's a big
problem with climate change and it's having an enormous impact
on Lake Mead, and because all these areas you know,
(35:17):
depend on it for electricity and water, everybody's really freaked
out right now, Yeah, so the the current proposition is
the l A Department of Water and Power. Um, they
have something on the table that it's basically like a loop,
a cycled loop system. They said, why don't we do
a return path for that water. Put a huge pump station,
(35:38):
solar powered pump station downstream that's gonna then send water
and cycle it back up to the reservoir. And not
only that, I mean it's a pretty good idea. Um.
Not only that, it would you could still you know,
you could enable more power generation and also create a
reserve of electricity for peak periods. So then all of
(35:58):
a sudden, the Hoover Dam is like a big battery
essentially run by uh, solar power, right, which sounds great.
It's like, okay, yeah, why why just let all that
water go when you're just generating hydroelectricity from it? You know,
put it back. But all the people who depend on
that water down stream say, uh, we still need that water.
(36:19):
You can't pump it back into Lake Mead. We need
that stuff like that's our water. Um. And that's part
of the problem with it, Chuck, is that there's so
many people who depend on this, not just from Hoover Dam,
but there's like multiple damns above Hoover Dam too. So
there's a lot of people drawing water for all sorts
(36:39):
of different purposes. Um, from the Colorado River. That there's
just it seems to be too many. There's just too
many people. There's too many, there's too much need. And
when you toss in climate change, uh and the impact
that the sixteen or nineteen your drought is having, it's, um,
it's it's it's a really precarious position right now that
they have not figured out. Yeah, pretty scary, man, it
(37:02):
is scary for sure. I got nothing else that is
surprising because there is a lot to talk about. I've
got one more thing. So you said that, um that
uh FDR dedicated the place in right? Is that what
I said? I believe that's what you said. Everybody, Yeah,
that's what you said. So. Um. There is a sculptor
(37:26):
named Oscar J. W. Hanton And you know the the
winged Art Deco giant figures the statues that are there
on site. So he created those. And did you notice
the Toronto floor the apron that's in front of those statues.
I don't remember. It's okay. So there are these two
giant art deco statues. They look kind of like the
(37:48):
Oscar Award, but with wings and they're seated and um.
They're there to just basically commemorate this conquering of humanity
over you know nature. Um. But on the round in
Toronto is a star map and it shows the exact
position of the stars in the sky on that day
(38:08):
in when Hoover Dam was dedicated, So that future generations
to come, even if there's like no more Americans and
no one speaks English anymore, and this whole area has
been abandoned, they could come back and find the Hoover
Dam and the star map and calculate the exact day
that it was dedicated, just based on the position of
the stars and this Toronto floor and that neat. That's amazing,
(38:32):
extra little touch there. Learn that on the self guided tour.
By the way, yep, if you want to know more
about the Hoover Dam, go go to the Hoover Dam.
We can talk about it all day long. We could
talk about it for two more episodes and it still
wouldn't get across what it's like to be there. Uh.
And since I said that it's time for listener mail,
(38:55):
I'm gonna call this. Uh uh, Well, we got something
wrong in deserts or Rival, which, by the way, we
got a lot of kudos that that perhaps maybe our
funniest episode. That was great. It was a lot of fun. Yeah,
we're being silly that day. Those are always good. Hey, guys,
been an ABBOD listener for years. Can't thank you enough
for the countless hours of entertainment. Despite all the great
(39:16):
topics and education, I've never been tempted to write until today.
During your Desert Survival opening an immediate and hilariously enjoyable
left turn tangent Chuck, you mentioned your tribute to Annie
with a reference to food Glorious Food. I feel so dumb.
That song is actually from Oliver, which I know. I
(39:37):
know that everybody knows. You know that I know Annie
and I know Oliver. Maybe they were friends. Could I
have school, please, Daddy war books? That's it. That's the
big line, um, he said. I thought you might get
a kick out of how I know this to be true.
When I was about eight or nine, my hometown did
a community production of Oliver and I was cast. What
(39:59):
part did you play? You may ask, Well, in the
song food Glorious Food, there's a line that goes food,
glorious food, peas puddings, and save lois. What next is
the question, rich gentleman, habit boys indigestion. At the singing
of Indigestion, my role and shining moment of the performance
(40:19):
was to lean over while the tuba and the orchestra
pit let out a deep and juicy note. Yes that's
right everyone. I was in the credits as the flatulent orphan.
See you get that he bends over in the tuba
goes uh got it. Needless to say, guys, my life
peaked early. I will always be remembered for that song.
Thanks for all you do. That is Eddie in Denver, Colorado. Eddie,
(40:43):
that was a fantastic listener mail, good one, like a
award winning maybe, ye man, I mean, if you're talking
tuba farts, you've got my heart. Yeah you. Eddie just
got the Hoover Damn Award for listener Mails, the current
Hoover Damn Award older. So thanks for that good one.
If you want to get in touch with us, you
(41:05):
can go to stuff you Should Know dot com. All
of our social links are on there, or you can
just send us an email. Send it off to Stuff
Podcast at i heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
(41:25):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, This is Chuck Hello, New York. Specifically, I'm
coming out there next week, next Tuesday, to perform as
a part of UH, the We Knows Parenting podcast. My
buddies Beth Newell and Pete McNerney. Pete, He's Peter. What
am I talking about? Uh? They're performing live We Knows
Parenting for the first time at Little Fields in Brooklyn
(00:23):
on Tuesday night, and I'm gonna be there. I'm coming
up for this. I'm gonna take the stage with them.
I'm gonna talk kids, and it's a good chance to
uh to say hi. Emily is gonna be there to everyone,
So come on out if you are in the New
York area Tuesday. That's this Tuesday at Little Fields in Brooklyn.
Go to We Knows Parenting dot com and buy tickets
(00:44):
there and UH, I would love to meet you. So
come on out and say hello. Welcome to Stuff You
should know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w.
Chuck Brian, there's Jerry over there. And this is part
(01:06):
due the sequel of Hoover Damn. Let's find out what happens.
So I think the last thing I said was they
poured the last bucket of concrete on and the end,
so let's do listener mail. Okay, I'm getting definitely worth
(01:26):
the two part um. Okay, Chuck. So they poured the
last bucket of concrete, they grouded everything off, and all
of a sudden, you now have one solid sheet of damn, Hoover, damn,
and um. At the bottom, it's much much wider than
it is at the top. It's like six plus feet
at the bottom, that's how wide it is. At the
(01:48):
top is forty five, which still feels substantial. And indeed
it's enough to have a two lane highway going over it,
and for a very long time, for sixty something years,
I've leave that was how you got um from Arizona
to Las Vegas. You had to drive over the Hoover
dam on top of it, which seems just about as
(02:10):
bone headed as it gets. But I guess they were.
They were They really wanted the gift shop money from
everybody they could get their hands on. Yeah, it was
kind of cool to have been forced to do that,
because whether you liked it or not, you were gonna
see an amazing thing. Um. But eventually, like you, like
you were hinting at, traffic just picked up and picked
up and they're like, you know what, this isn't great
(02:31):
to have all these cars um driving over this thing
every day. So let's build a bridge. You know what
we'll do. Let's build the longest concrete gravity arch bridge
on in North America. Which is appropriate because again, if
you take a gravity arch bridge and lay it on
its side, you've got basically the Hoover Dam right there. Yeah.
So it spans over a thousand feet about a thousand
(02:51):
sixty feet of the Black Canyon, just south of the
old Route, nine feet above the canyon. Have you been
to this bridge? Yeah, it's cool, Like I have driven
over that bridge since I visited the damn itself in
ninety six. And you get a great view from up there, yes,
you do. You also get to experience the most terror
(03:13):
you can possibly experience on a bridge because the railing
is like less than five ft tall. There's no big barrier,
there's no nuts, there's no nothing. It's just void right
on the other side. It's so scary. But yes, the
view is is unparalleled. I don't think you can walk
across it, though, can you Yes, you can, Yes, I
(03:36):
had no idea. Oh yeah, there's a no, there's a
pedestrian walkway and the railing is less than five ft.
I didn't notice that. Oh yeah, that's that's why you
weren't terrified. You you walk across this thing and it
is so scary. Oh my gosh, it's scary. But it's
really really amazing, like the most amazing views of Hoover
dam Um. Prior to the bridge opening. We're all done
(03:59):
like from about this vantage point by helicopter. Now, any
smoke can just walk out there, just park and walk
and and see it yourself, and it's pretty amazing. You
see all sorts of rainbows. We saw a bunch of
rainbows while we were there, because the water is flowing
out of the damn outlets and um, the sun shining
and there's just rainbows. Like you can't you can't throw
(04:19):
a rock and not hit a rainbow around there. Well,
Bob mould would end up writing a great song, uh,
after being inspired by a visit. There a rainbow connection. No,
he Bob Moulden remember Sugar sure and Whisker do. Yeah,
but Sugar was his band in the early nineties. And uh,
he had a great song called Hoover dam I didn't
not standing on the edge of the Hoover Damn. That's
(04:43):
such a good bob mole. So March one, believe it
or not, they finished this thing under budget two years
ahead of schedule. Um, yeah, I want to say something
about that real quick. Remember they called Frank crow the
the guy who was running was the project manager for
the whole thing. Crow. They called him hurry up Crow's right.
(05:07):
So he um made the company eight million dollars. Remember
how they bid the thing out at just twenty four
grand over cost. By coming in under budget and that early,
they saved eight million dollars. So he was he was
quite the hero for the corporate overlords, old slow money bags.
(05:28):
Crow right. So finally the moment comes, and I can't
imagine what this must have been like, but they were
able to release that Colorado River that had been on hold,
we'll not on hold, but flowing in a different place
all those years, back into that original route. And all
of a sudden you have Lake Mead, the Lake Mead Reservoir.
(05:51):
It is um a hundred and ten miles stretching a
hundred and ten miles upstream from the Hoover Dam and
attracts ten million people a year two water, ski and
sun and boat and do fun things. Yeah. Because again
it was the designated as the nation's first national recreation area, recreation, recreation, recreation. Uh,
(06:18):
it's the biggest reservoir in the world and um, which
is saying something because there's some gigant or reservoirs out there. Yeah,
this one is one point to four trillion cubic feet.
They so there's so much water in their chuck that
they measure it by acre feet, which is how much
water it takes to flood an acre a square acre
(06:40):
of land. And there's something like twenty eight million acre
feet in in Lake Mead at its capacity. That's a
lot of flooded acres. As a matter of fact, it's
like twenty eight million square flooded acres of water right there.
That's a lot of water. Yeah, And like me decide
(07:02):
we should probably go over some of them, some of
the stats for Hoover Damn itself, because it's it's done now.
It's the um at the time was the tallest damn
in the world by more than three feet um seven
six ft from the canyon floor. And now it is
the second tallest still the second tallest concrete gravity damn
(07:26):
in the United States, behind the Araville Dam in California,
which I don't know if you looked at that, but
it's no Hoover dam Oh is it schlubby? I mean
it's fine. Looks like a big giant slipping slide. It's
got this huge ramp. Yeah, it's fun. But again, Bob
Mule didn't write a song called the Araville Damn. Can
I hear a little snippet of it? If you have
(07:49):
no no, no, no no, just just play the first
one again and I'll do this. Aura Ville's so good
Today Hoover Dame is still uh second in the country
in power production and ranks eleventh in the world in
power production. It's second in the country still for power. Yeah,
(08:13):
for power production. Wow, that's that's that's crazy and the
biggest until nine when the Grand Coulee hydro electric Dam
in the Columbia River in Washington State took it over, right, right,
But so that there and there's still one and two
I guess then is the thing that's right. But what's craziest,
So the hydro electric power from the Hoover Dam generates
(08:35):
like four billion kilowatt hours annually. Okay, that that must
be like enough to power the entire US. That's actually
not the case at all. Um, it's about I believe
quarter or a five of the annual power consumption of
just Los Angeles County, just Los Angeles. Um, it's about
(08:59):
a of it, but so sure, and it is having
a significant impact. I read that if they stopped producing
electricity at the Hoover Dam, everyone in California and the
Southwest power bills would go up by like a month.
That's pretty substantial. Um, but it's it's still I'm I'm
(09:20):
I guess I'm saying like I'm surprised it's the number
two guy on the block. Still. Yeah. They the way
they distribute it to is, Um, California gets about almost
fifty of the power. Uh, Nevada, Nevada, they both get,
and then Arizona gets about close to n Did they
(09:40):
split that yeah, Nevada, Nevada. Yeah, Yeah, but that's only
fifty three or fifty seventy three. That's still not I
wonder where if the rest where the rest goes downstream
the power? Yeah, well no, always so you're talking about
the power of the water. The power. Oh, I don't know,
because I wonder how much of that operates the damn itself.
(10:05):
Can't be that much. I mean, that's a lot left over.
I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not really sure. So, um,
regardless of where that that phantom electricity goest Chuck, I
want to talk about another extraordinarily foresightful um part of
this project. Do you remember when they diverted the river
in those four tunnels around the damn project site? What
(10:29):
what are you talking about? Well, let's go back. Well,
we'll go back and replay the entire episode real quick,
and they'll be in there somewhere. So, so they diverted
the river so they could build the dam, and they
saved those those tunnels. They didn't just like cover them
up and say forget you, we don't need you anymore.
They said, no, no, no, we can actually use you
(10:49):
in the future. So one on each side is now
called the penn stock. It's a it's they they've been
um encased in steel and then um narrow rowed from
fifty ft to thirty ft in diameter, which is still
pretty substantial, and they use those to send water from
the lake mead to the power station turbines on either side,
(11:13):
the Nevada side and the Arizona side, and that's where
the hydroelectric power is is generated. So they use the
diversion tunnels to generate the hydroelectric power. Now, yeah, it's
amazing the water falls into these things. Uh go down
about five feet into this power station, which, by the way,
part of the tour is you get to go down
into the bowels. We miss that, which is kind of neat. Um. Yeah,
(11:39):
you didn't about the word bowels just turned you off,
So that's why did um. So it falls about five
feet into the power station. Uh, it's flowing here at
about two thousand cubic feet between two and three thousand
cubic feet per second, And anyone who knows what hydro
electric power means, all you're doing is using that water
(11:59):
to spin turbine and connect that to a power generator
and all of a sudden, Arizona, Nevada, and California are
getting juice, right, which is pretty ingenious because if you
think about it, when when that water is flowing from
Lake me down these um these pen stocks to the turbines,
(12:20):
they're not using any pumps or anything like that. It's
all just gravity um sending it over like a six
hundred feet drop and what did you say? It was
like two thousand to three thousand cubic feet per second,
So that chuck is a lot of water. That is
a tremendous amount of water, so much so that converted
(12:41):
into big Max per second. You're talking eighty nine thousand,
three hundred and sixty seven big Max per second if
you're moving water to two thousand cubic feet per second.
And that's actually accurate based on the dimensions of big
MACA did the calculation. That's how many big Max would
be flying past you in a second if if it
were big Max instead of water they were sending down
(13:04):
there the other stat which staggers me and uh, because
I was thinking, like, there's no way Julia actually figured
out the horse power of this whole thing, and she
did well, she found someone who did, and this thing
can crank out almost three million horsepower combined. I know
(13:29):
that's a lot of horse power, but I'm just trying
to like put it in other terms, like how many
how many trains is that We'll just think about standing uh,
in the middle of a desert and seeing three million
horses charging at you. It's a lot of horsepower. That's
a lot of horses. It is so the way that
the water gets from Lake Mead down to the turbines,
(13:52):
I mean, it's all very much control. And the way
they control it is if you ever go to the
Hoover Dam, just on the Lake Mead side of the dam,
there these four towers that rise out of the water,
and those towers have gates that can be opened and
closed to let water in. And those are the gates
that let the water and that send it to the
pen socks down in into to power the turbines and
(14:15):
the power stations, apparently to the tune of three million
horse power. It is amazing. Again, all of this if
you step back and just kind of look at it
as a kid, you're like, yeah, put a hole here
to make the water go there, to make the turbine spin.
It's really simple in a lot of ways. But the
amount of ingenuousness it took to actually execute it, that's
(14:36):
where the chef's kiss lines. All right, let's take a
break here and uh, we're gonna come back and talk
about uh spill ways right after this. Alright, chuck. So
(15:19):
they used two of the four diversion tunnels to feed
the turbines to generate hydroelectric power that leaves to other ones.
And I know they didn't just forget about those what
are they using those four? And this is sort of
the final component here, because what they had to do was, Um,
I mean, when this thing is working great, which it
(15:41):
almost always has, we'll get to that in a second. Um,
everything's awesome. People are getting power, people are waterskiing on
Lake Mead. Um, people are getting water, Crops are getting water,
cows are drinking water. Everybody's happy. But they did have
to think about the fact that the Colorado River used
to be quite a bear and may get angry again
one day, or this thing may fail one day. So
(16:04):
we need to think about what happens if something does
go wrong, whether it's a flood or the system breaks
down or something. So they thought ahead and they they
set up what we're called spill ways. They can actually
divert once again, all that water into those two outer tunnels,
uh that are now referred to as spill ways. But
(16:25):
this is downstream, right right, so not the upstream tunnels
that are being used UH for the flibbertyg of its.
Have you ever seen a fish ladder? Surely you have, Yeah,
we've I think we've even talked about them on something before. Yeah.
That's basically like an upstream spill way. Yeah, okay, So
(16:45):
this is the opposite that's sending it down, and it's
it's it's the exact same principle and almost the exact
same design as that little overflow hole that you have
in your sink. So like you you can't flood your
bathroom because eventually, if that water or level hits that hole,
it's just going to go into the hole and down
the drain. Anyway, this is the exact same thing. So
(17:06):
they utilize those remaining two um diversion tunnels as the spillways,
and they didn't lower them at all. Remember they reduced
the other ones to like thirty ft from fifty ft.
These are still fifty ft spill ways lined with like
three ft of concrete. But they follow very similar trajectories
where you know, the water hits a certain level on
(17:27):
like a flood or whatever, and it goes through these
spill ways and then it drops several hundred feet I
think six hundred feet, which is a lot for a
lot of water to drop. It starts to pick up
a pretty pretty high velocity, and then it it all
spills out of these gates a little further downstream beyond
the hydroelectric plants, and everybody's saved and happy and nothing. No,
(17:51):
no waters ever meant to go over the top of
the Hoover Dam. If that ever happened, that would be
colossally bad. It's never designed to do that. Um, it
probably never will do that. Even if humans suddenly just
vanish overnight, the spillways would probably still work. But um,
that's what it's designed for. Is designed to just get
(18:12):
rid of that water and reroute it, basically like they
rerouted the Colorado River, but this time they're rerouting it
around the power stations which would be swamped with that
much water. Yeah, and they don't let it's it's not
like they were like, all right, if this gets within
like three or four feet, we're gonna take action. If
it gets to within they said it at twenty seven feet.
So if the water rises for any reason to within
(18:34):
that twenty seven feet to the top of where those
cards are driving, the spillway gates open up, uh, and
it diverts that water and the dam uh is not
able to breach, which like you said, would be catastrophic.
It let's out a big huray uh. And the good
news is the system, that outlet system has never failed
(18:56):
uh and it's only had to be used twice once
for the test in one and then in nineteen eighty three.
It was actually a flood that got within that caused
that river to go up within twenty seven feet and
they opened up that spillway, which I imagine there was
I mean, it was probably kind of scary, but they
were probably some engineers that were pretty excited to get
(19:18):
to use those spillways finally, Yeah, because they I mean,
you would have had to have been an old time
or to have been there for the nineteen forty one
test by the time three came around. So I'm sure
all these people wanted to see this because they they
had never seen it work before, and they also wanted
to know if it did work. And it definitely worked.
I mean it was it wasn't a drill like one.
(19:39):
It was a straight up flood like this is what
it was designed for, and it worked just fine. Yeah.
But both times during the test and during that flood,
those spill ways suffered some some damage. So let's talk
about the um the failures that have happened over the years. Right.
So in those those first few years, when everyone was
still kind of biting their nails a little bit, there
(20:00):
were there were a couple of problems. Um Air bubbles
formed in these spill ways and seepage, like water started
seeping under the base of the dam, which is not
good at all. No, and those are actually two different things,
so both we'll start with the the um air bubbles, right.
So that's that's called cavitation. And when the spill ways
(20:22):
were used, both in that ninety one test and in
the actual flood, when that water, that huge, huge amounts
of water fell, you know, six hundred feet down to
the elbow of the spill way that led it the
rest of the way out to the river um when
it hit, when it impacted. By that time, these things
(20:45):
called cavitations, a little like bubbles of vapor had formed
in the water column. And these things were so strong
that when they collapsed they had enough force that they
could like shatter concrete. So when this the spill test
was done, the spell way test, and then when the
flood was over, and the spell ways were turned off.
They went and investigated. There were huge chunks of concrete missing.
(21:08):
The water had just sheared it away like it was nothing.
And the cavitation is still not really fully understood. It's
part of like a really um infrequent unusual occurrence like that,
like water typically doesn't flow that fast on Earth over
you know, a man made structure, so it's not like
something we have to worry about. But they figured out
that if you insert aer raiders or air ducts something
(21:32):
to insert air into that water to kind of lessen
the blow kind of pad or pillow the the impact
of those cavitations collapsing, it can protect concrete. And so
after one they didn't really know what they were doing
after somebody had figured out aeration by that time, and
so they installed them right afterwards. And as far as
(21:54):
I know, they haven't tested it to see if it works,
but in other places it's been shown to work, so
I think gets a pretty safe bat that if those
overflow spill ways have to be used again, they probably
won't cavitate because of the aeration that was inserted into
the spill ways. Now, yeah, well, I actually saw in
forty one they knew that they could do this with
(22:14):
air ducks, but the government wouldn't pony up for the money.
Oh is there right, Yeah, they denied the funds. And
uh it took until that flood of eighty three when
it happened again, when the government was like, all right,
we'll pay for this stuff. Fine, Hoover's ghost came out
for the don't get involved. It's not the government's job
(22:36):
to pay for broken concrete. So, um, this seepage was
the other was the other sort of engineering failure, and
we should, you know, we need to point out that
this thing is performed really, really well, Like none of
these failures broke the damn. You know, that's a really
good point, and I think it's definitely worth pointing out.
Like the spill waves those were huge you know where
(22:57):
where and tear that that probably shouldn't have happened in
probably won't again. But yeah, the whole system still worked. Yeah.
So if you have a damn like this, Um, the
stability of this whole thing relies on keeping all that
water out. So any seepage under the base of that
damn is not good. It's gonna cause uplift pressure that's
(23:18):
gonna shift the whole foundation, and this grout uh basically
was was failing. Um, a grout curtain is going to
prevent the seepage. So they were pressure injecting all this
grout into these holes trying to fill cavities, but it, uh,
it was not and they were getting some seepage in there. Well,
they did a really poor job of geological exploration before
(23:43):
they ever started the project. Yeah, that was the main
issue there. So, like the same grout that they they
introduced into those cooling pipes after they were finished building
the actual damn itself, they were they were introducing that
into these holes they drilled to kind of fill those cracks, crevices, faults,
all this stuff that's in the bedrock. Because normally, when
(24:03):
the Colorado rivers flowing chuck, it's like it's fine, it's
allowed to keep going and it doesn't try to get
anywhere aside from the river bed. But when it runs
into the dam, then it's got issues. The water wants
to go somewhere, right, Yeah, that's what water does. It
wants to go somewhere, So it starts to find those
little cracks and crevices and faults, and when it fills
(24:24):
up enough of them, it can actually lift up the dam,
and that's what it was doing, it was lifting up
the dam. So they went back and drilled more holes
and added even more grout and basically created this barrier.
So you've got the barrier that's the dam, and then
you have the barrier that's this grout reinforced bedrock, you know,
hundreds of feet down into the earth. So now the
(24:47):
water just gives up and does what it's told. Yeah,
I love that they they really went overboard there and
like an additional three feet underground with this grout. But
imagine being like the dam is actually lifting up, it's
starting to float. That is the exact opposite of what
you want to go on with your damn. Yeah, for sure,
(25:09):
because apparently on the on the face of the damn,
the um upstream face, the water pressing up against it
like meat, is over a hundred miles long. It's an
enormous amount of water and it's being held back by
this one slab of concrete. And I guess I think
Julius said it was like forty five thousand pounds per
(25:31):
square feet of pressure pressing up against the damn at
all times. So yeah, that that um that's a that's
just Harry if you think about it, especially then if
you start to think about the that amount of that
amount of concrete like being lifted up by the water
and it's just basically being moved out of the way,
and they had to stop it in time. Alright, folks,
(25:53):
we're gonna take our last break. We're gonna come back
and finish up with part four, Part two of Hoover
Damn right after this. All right, we're gonna bring it
(26:34):
home here with um or or we could keep talking
about it forever, uh, with a little bit on how
um the Hoover Damn just really changed the United States
and especially the Southwest. UM Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the
damn on sept and man insult to injury. Former President
(26:57):
Herbert Hoover was not even on the guests list to
come from and see that dedication. No, do you mene
like four years after and he was the guy who
was the first champion of the whole thing too, I
mean like it was his project for sure. So uh,
that area, that region, it really changed everything, um aside
(27:17):
from Boulder City becoming a real place, which is kind
of neat in Vegas growing. The whole region was allowed
to flourish, um because well one big reason it's because
they tamed that Colorado River. No more flooding, right, Um,
So no more flooding meant that you could actually have
like a stable agricultural um industry, right yeah the area.
(27:42):
It says here the region's crops and livestock account for
and of the entire country's production. Yeah, and they grow
so much like lettuce and cilancho and stuff that that
regions now called America's salad bowl. Um. It's a huge, like,
it has enormous amounts of production, and it never would
have gotten to that that point had the Hoover damn
(28:04):
not produced like a steady, reliable supply of irrigation and
um done away with flooding. Like there's no more. There
hasn't been a single flood from the Colorado River that's
affected any of the land in the area since the
Hoover Dam came online. You know, when I lived in
Yuma and I waited tables at Julianna's patio cafe, there
(28:24):
was this this dude, I can't remember his name, but
this one guy that would bring in a bunch of
big money guys uh to eat every now and then,
like six or eight of them for these business dinners.
And he was a lettuce guy. Oh yeah, okay, And
I just thought it was so funny growing up in
Atlanta and never you know, thought about it. But he
all he did was grow let us in. If he
(28:47):
came in with his you know, six or eight buddies,
like you had to shut down and take that table
only like he expected you to only wait on your
table right. Well, there's some real lettuce in it for you,
Oh there was. It was he a good tipper because
a lot of times those guys are not well. It
was he always had a party big enough to where
(29:07):
the tip was included. Um. And he would usually give
you give you a little lettuce on top of that.
That's nice. Literally, here's a piece of romaine for you.
It's good for you, kid, and spank you on the
bottom as you were walking away down. Um. So the
Hoover Dam changed everything, like Uh, places like Tucson, Arizona
(29:28):
would not even have been allowed to happen. Uh in
Las Vegas and l A booming like it did, um
thanks to the Hoover Dam. Like you said, no flooding
tons of production and everything is under control. One thing
they did have to worry about, well, we'll talk about
what they are worrying about now in a minute. But
(29:48):
one thing they did worry about then and then, like
in World War two and again at nine eleven, was
the fact that it's a terror target because it so
many places rely on this for water, the irrigation. That
if terrorist organization took out the Hoover Dam especially I
mean to be bad anytime, but especially in World War two,
it would have been catastrophic. Yeah, so I guess nineteen
(30:12):
thirty nine, the Mexican government let the American embassy in
Mexico City know, hey, we just heard that the Germans
are planning on bombing Hoover Dam, and UM America was
like what, And they put up all these new safeguards
and got military police to patrol the area. They installed
floodlights on Lake Mead, they put up a steel net
(30:34):
so you couldn't get anywhere near the um, anywhere near
the dam on the Lake Mead side because remember, I mean,
people are like boating and recreating on this um. So
they had to kind of keep people away from the
damn for the first time. And but they still kept
going on. You could still go visit and everything, and
then Pearl Harbor happened. Um, and they were like damns
closed and they closed the damn to the public for
(30:57):
the duration of the war, I think until like the
end of ninety five they finally opened it to the
public again. All because of the dirty Nazis. Yeah, man,
and they um they did. The damn itself actually had
its own police force. Um. The Army of course came
in there to help out as well. But it was
a pretty big deal because not only are you disrupting
(31:17):
water and maybe flooding the valley, but the power supply
to southern California. There was a lot of aviation manu
still is a lot of aviation manufacturing in Southern California
and for and I think that's what the Nazis were
really after, to disrupt the power supply to the aviation industry. Yeah,
because at the time America wasn't even in World War
(31:39):
Two yet, but we were helping the British with the
aviation stuff we were building. So they were trying to
strike at the heart of British capabilities by blowing up
the Hoover Dam. There, unexpected the Nazis want to blow
up the Hoover dam and the US is like, what
did we do? We're not even in this so called
World war, right, Oh yeah, helping them? It's all right,
(32:00):
I got you. We're still not going to let you
do it, but now we understand. Uh. And then, of
course after nine eleven it was, um, there was a
lot of fear that that could be a potential and
it still limbs as a potential terrorist target. Well that
was one reason why they built the bridge, the bypass bridge,
was They're like, you know, this is just too vulnerable
(32:20):
letting people drive over it. And so from what I understand,
either after um the German bomb plot became evident or
after nine eleven, and I think it was after nine
eleven until that bridge opened up, when you drove over
the Hoover damn you had to wait and it would
happen and I guess shifts, and you would be escorted
(32:42):
across by the police um in groups of cars, and
then you'd be you'd make your way to the other
side and they'd be like keep going, don't even look back,
or we'll arrest you. Um. And then that's how you
got across until they finally opened the bypass, which must
have been um up, but there are a lot of delays. Yeah,
probably so in that situation. So the current threat, aside
(33:05):
from that looming terror threat, is the fact that, uh,
there have been about sixteen years of drought in that area,
and uh it's scary. Man. Lake meat is not the same.
I mean it is what it like a hundred and
fifty feet uh lower than it used to be then
(33:26):
it wasn't two thousand and thirty feet. I mean that's amaze.
That's a huge, huge drop. Yeah, there's like a bathtub
ring high water mark. Now it's just the discoloration along
the canyon walls where you can see where it used
to be, and it's really significant. And the problem is
when they built the dam, they built it so that
the the gates that um allow water down to the
(33:51):
pen socks to the hydro electric plant they cut off
at a certain height. After that the water is too
low to flow through the gates, and in you have
no hydro electric power. Same thing with the pipes that
pump water out to Las Vegas and Los Angeles and
Tucson and everywhere else that gets water. Um, they're at
(34:11):
a certain height too, so once they I think, once
the water level hits like eight ft, there's no more
water that can be drawn out. And they actually got
around this by creating a new low level pumping system
to where they came in and went under the under
Lake Mead and tapped into it and now just like
(34:34):
a bathtub drain at the bottom of a bathtub, there's
a pumping station so that that now they're not like, Okay,
we have eight water we can't get to to drink
from any longer. Now they're like, no, we can. We
can get to all the water we need to for
um for drinking, which is a huge relief. That's a big,
big deal that they were able to do this. But
(34:55):
at the same time, everyone's still very much aware that
they're like, we still have issues, like we're losing water
through evaporation and from um, you know, lower and lower
snow accumulations up in the Rockies where all this water
comes from in the first place. Like there's a big
problem with climate change and it's having an enormous impact
on Lake Mead, and because all these areas you know,
(35:17):
depend on it for electricity and water, everybody's really freaked
out right now, Yeah, so the the current proposition is
the l A Department of Water and Power. Um, they
have something on the table that it's basically like a loop,
a cycled loop system. They said, why don't we do
a return path for that water. Put a huge pump station,
(35:38):
solar powered pump station downstream that's gonna then send water
and cycle it back up to the reservoir. And not
only that, I mean it's a pretty good idea. Um.
Not only that, it would you could still you know,
you could enable more power generation and also create a
reserve of electricity for peak periods. So then all of
(35:58):
a sudden, the Hoover Dam is like a big battery
essentially run by uh, solar power, right, which sounds great.
It's like, okay, yeah, why why just let all that
water go when you're just generating hydroelectricity from it? You know,
put it back. But all the people who depend on
that water down stream say, uh, we still need that water.
(36:19):
You can't pump it back into Lake Mead. We need
that stuff like that's our water. Um. And that's part
of the problem with it, Chuck, is that there's so
many people who depend on this, not just from Hoover Dam,
but there's like multiple damns above Hoover Dam too. So
there's a lot of people drawing water for all sorts
(36:39):
of different purposes. Um, from the Colorado River. That there's
just it seems to be too many. There's just too
many people. There's too many, there's too much need. And
when you toss in climate change, uh and the impact
that the sixteen or nineteen your drought is having, it's, um,
it's it's it's a really precarious position right now that
they have not figured out. Yeah, pretty scary, man, it
(37:02):
is scary for sure. I got nothing else that is
surprising because there is a lot to talk about. I've
got one more thing. So you said that, um that
uh FDR dedicated the place in right? Is that what
I said? I believe that's what you said. Everybody, Yeah,
that's what you said. So. Um. There is a sculptor
(37:26):
named Oscar J. W. Hanton And you know the the
winged Art Deco giant figures the statues that are there
on site. So he created those. And did you notice
the Toronto floor the apron that's in front of those statues.
I don't remember. It's okay. So there are these two
giant art deco statues. They look kind of like the
(37:48):
Oscar Award, but with wings and they're seated and um.
They're there to just basically commemorate this conquering of humanity
over you know nature. Um. But on the round in
Toronto is a star map and it shows the exact
position of the stars in the sky on that day
(38:08):
in when Hoover Dam was dedicated, So that future generations
to come, even if there's like no more Americans and
no one speaks English anymore, and this whole area has
been abandoned, they could come back and find the Hoover
Dam and the star map and calculate the exact day
that it was dedicated, just based on the position of
the stars and this Toronto floor and that neat. That's amazing,
(38:32):
extra little touch there. Learn that on the self guided tour.
By the way, yep, if you want to know more
about the Hoover Dam, go go to the Hoover Dam.
We can talk about it all day long. We could
talk about it for two more episodes and it still
wouldn't get across what it's like to be there. Uh.
And since I said that it's time for listener mail,
(38:55):
I'm gonna call this. Uh uh, Well, we got something
wrong in deserts or Rival, which, by the way, we
got a lot of kudos that that perhaps maybe our
funniest episode. That was great. It was a lot of fun. Yeah,
we're being silly that day. Those are always good. Hey, guys,
been an ABBOD listener for years. Can't thank you enough
for the countless hours of entertainment. Despite all the great
(39:16):
topics and education, I've never been tempted to write until today.
During your Desert Survival opening an immediate and hilariously enjoyable
left turn tangent Chuck, you mentioned your tribute to Annie
with a reference to food Glorious Food. I feel so dumb.
That song is actually from Oliver, which I know. I
(39:37):
know that everybody knows. You know that I know Annie
and I know Oliver. Maybe they were friends. Could I
have school, please, Daddy war books? That's it. That's the
big line, um, he said. I thought you might get
a kick out of how I know this to be true.
When I was about eight or nine, my hometown did
a community production of Oliver and I was cast. What
(39:59):
part did you play? You may ask, Well, in the
song food Glorious Food, there's a line that goes food,
glorious food, peas puddings, and save lois. What next is
the question, rich gentleman, habit boys indigestion. At the singing
of Indigestion, my role and shining moment of the performance
(40:19):
was to lean over while the tuba and the orchestra
pit let out a deep and juicy note. Yes that's
right everyone. I was in the credits as the flatulent orphan.
See you get that he bends over in the tuba
goes uh got it. Needless to say, guys, my life
peaked early. I will always be remembered for that song.
Thanks for all you do. That is Eddie in Denver, Colorado. Eddie,
(40:43):
that was a fantastic listener mail, good one, like a
award winning maybe, ye man, I mean, if you're talking
tuba farts, you've got my heart. Yeah you. Eddie just
got the Hoover Damn Award for listener Mails, the current
Hoover Damn Award older. So thanks for that good one.
If you want to get in touch with us, you
(41:05):
can go to stuff you Should Know dot com. All
of our social links are on there, or you can
just send us an email. Send it off to Stuff
Podcast at i heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
(41:25):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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