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Show BOULDER DAM BUILDING TO START IN 1933 i Preliminary Phases of Work Being Rushed for Early Start; Construction to Start Late Next Summer Walker R. Young, chief of the bureau of reclamation, last week announced that work on the construction of the two coffer dams and the excavation of the river bottom at the Boulder dam site is expected to be completed complet-ed so that construction of the actual dam will get under way about the latter part of the summer sum-mer of 1933, according to the Las Vegas Age. Remaining work to be finished before this step is taken consists con-sists of finishing the coffer dams, putting concrete facing on the upper coffer dam, concreting concret-ing the spillways on the Nevada Ne-vada and Arizona sides and excavating ex-cavating the dam abutments. Workmen have already started riveting the gate at the lower end of tunnel No. 2, which gate is now bolted into place. As soon as the riveting has been completed com-pleted the machinery for its operation op-eration will be installed. The erection of the bulkhead gate at the intake of tunnel No. 1 has been started as well as excavation for the cut-off wall at the outlet of the same tunnel. tun-nel. Construction of the rock barrier, bar-rier, the fill that is being put in just below the lower coffer dam, is building rapidly. The purpose of this barrier is to protect pro-tect the lower dam against the heavy eddies which will be created cre-ated by the discharge of water from the diversion bore. The construction of the upper up-per coffer dam is being raised at the rate of two to three feet per day, in other words muck is being hauled into the fill sufficiently suf-ficiently fast to cause it to raise from two to three feet every 24 hours. Excavation for the dam abutment abut-ment has been started near the top of the Arizona canyon rim. A similar excavation for the dam on the Nevada side will be started start-ed in the immediate future. Work is underway for the outlet valve houses on both sides of the river just below the dam and the power house. Four penstock tunnels leading from diversion tunnel No. 2 to the power house are under way. Six tunnels are being excavated exca-vated on the Nevada side leading lead-ing to the outlet valve house which is to carry water from the upper penstock tunnel to the outlet valves, on the Nevada side. iSimilar ones on the Arizona side have not been started as yet. The purpose of these valves is to discharge irrigation water and flood water back into the river below the dam site. Work is under way on the anchorages for the government 150 ton cableway. The purpose of the cable way is to carry the penstock pipe from the Nevada canyon rim down to the entrances en-trances of the adits where they will be loaded on cars and taken ta-ken into the tunnels. Later this cable way will be used for the installation of power house machinery. |
