Walnut Grove Elec.Book
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Arizona’s Worst Disaster The Hassayampa Story 1886–2009 Jim Liggett The Hassayampa River downstream of the Walnut Grove Dam site Water, water, water…There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock. Of water to sand, insuring that wide, free, open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here, unless you try to establish a city where no city should be. Edward Abbey, Wilderness Reader i The picture on the cover is a photo of a diorama in the Desert Caballe- ros Western Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona, done by George Fuller of Wickenburg. It is the artist’s depiction of the flood wave from the Walnut Grove Dam failure exiting Box Canyon. Photograph of the diorama is courtesy of the Desert Caballeros Western Museum. Back cover: The Hassayampa River Preserve is a virtual desert oasis. The green trees—mostly cottonwoods, willows, and mesquites but also palms and other vegetation—are a result of the constant supply of water. Water appears on the surface here throughout the year as shown in the inset taken after a summer of very low precipitation. Copyright © James A. Liggett, 2009, 2010 Copyright statement: This book is made available without the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) for the convenience of the user. The user is asked to respect the copyright and not to distribute the book to others. Copyright violations will be taken seriously and, in addition to prosecution of the violator, may result in penalizing other users by forcing the sale of the book under DRM. However, the user may distribute or use a small portion—not to exceed ten pages—of the book in other publications without the explicit permission of the copy- right holder if that part is properly referenced. If an educator wishes to distribute this book, or a part of it, to his/her class, he/she should con- tact the author for permission to do so without charge. Library of Congress Control Number: 2009938080 ISBN: 0-9765591-2-9 Pathfinder Publishing, 51662 US 60/89, Wickenburg, AZ 85390 ii To Carole iii iv Table of contents Table of contents . v Preface . ix The facts . xi Acknowledgements . xii About the author. .xiv Chapter 1— Gold . 1 The gold rush . 2 The Bates brothers . 7 Henry Spingler Van Beuren . 8 Chapter 2— Hassayampa River . 11 Water uses. 14 The watershed . 15 Dam-site flow calculations . 18 Chapter 3— Dams and “hydraulicking” . 21 The process . 21 The dams. 24 Environmental concerns . 26 Legal . 29 Chapter 4— Collapse. 31 The flood. 31 People . 33 William Akard and Dan Burke. 33 William O. (“Buckey”) O’Neill . 35 Mary Hanlon . 37 Accounts . 38 Miscellaneous stories. 39 Dam safety . 44 Chapter 5— The dam . 47 Engineers . 47 Prof. William P. Blake . 47 Table of contents v Edwin N. Robinson . 51 Walter G. Bates. 53 Luther Wagoner . 54 James Emmett Anderson. 55 Alexander Oswald Brodie. 55 Design . 58 Construction. 63 The mysterious flume . 63 Leaks . 68 The spillway. 70 Blame. 72 The case against the dam . 72 The case for the dam. 76 Newspapers. 78 The Lower dam . 80 Litigation . 82 Chapter 6— Hassayampa River: 1890-2009 . 87 Floods since 1890. 88 The flood of 1970 . 88 Extreme floods . 90 Other floods . 91 Chapter 7— Rebuilding . 93 Rebuilding Walnut Grove Dam. 93 Box Canyon Dam, the Nadaburg project. 95 The Carey Act . 96 Financing . 97 Prospects. 99 Reports . 102 The USBR report. 103 Economic analysis . 105 Box Canyon Dam, FCDMC . 107 Box Canyon Dam, Wickenburg efforts . 108 The Gookin Report . 108 Council discussions. 109 Postface. 111 vi Table of contents Calculations . 111 Planning . 112 Construction. 112 Competence . 112 Rebuilding . 113 Appendix I: Timeline . 115 Appendix II: Numbers . 121 River flow . 121 Outlet pipes . 121 Spillway flow . 122 Lake storage change . 122 Total flow and probability . 123 Over the dam . 124 Flood hydrographs . 124 Approximations . 125 Damsite flow at failure. 126 Calibration . 126 The hydrograph . 127 Two “what ifs” . 127 Robinson’s spillway . 128 Flume flow . 128 Reservoir area . 129 Appendix III: Brodie’s letter to Van Beuren . 131 Appendix IV: Plans and specifications . 139 References . 141 Index. 147 Table of contents vii viii Table of contents Preface On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam, 14 miles upstream of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, collapsed. The result was the worst flood disaster in the United States to date (2008) with more than 2200 people killed. The dam was 72 feet high and Lake Conemaugh held 4.8 bil- lion gallons of water. On February 22, 1890, the Walnut Grove Dam (see map) in central Arizona collapsed. It was 110 feet high and held 9.8 billion gallons of water. Only the fact of a low population density downstream of the dam prevented the death toll from reaching that of the South Fork Dam. The immediate cause of both disasters was the same, an inadequate spillway to carry off flood water. Aside from the spillway, poor engi- neering and poor construction may have been contributory causes in both cases. In both cases economics, and the resulting constraints imposed by owners, limited the engineers ability to make the dams safe. The Johnstown flood was a signature event in Pennsylvania history, but the Walnut Grove failure is barely mentioned, if at all, in Arizona history books. The latter, however, made an impact in the Territory. Many of the famous—Brodie, Wittmann, O’Neill, Powell—played roles either before or after the flood. The flood may have prevented Wickenburg from becoming the Territorial capital. It caused the great- est loss of life of any single event in Arizona to this date with the exception of the collision of two airliners over the Grand Canyon in 1956. Although a disaster, the failure of the dam prevented the sort of destruction due to hydraulic mining on the Hassayampa River, Weaver Creek and Antelope Creek that befell several rivers in California..