Hydrology of Halloween

Cure for unlikely California drought. Frank Tinsley/Mechanix Illustrated, October 1951

Of the UC Davis Center for watershed Sciences staff

If these ideas of the 1950s to resolve California water problems scare you, we do not know what will be. Happy halloween!

The Cornell Plan
Sidney Cornell, a civil engineer from Los Angeles, circulated an idea for the transport of water in Northern California to the arid southern end of the State without any problems and the costs of long channels, pipes and pumps. He proposed to build giant cannons to shoot water into the air for the capture of the km, as shown in a Mechanix illustrated 1951.

Perhaps the time for idea of Cornell. Why spend billions of dollars for the water in the direction of the tunnel under the Delta South when we cannot simply take our way to solve the problem? Just one of these guns of gargantuan Cornell plant intakes from the South to the Sacramento River Delta near the Woods, who could use the tourist attraction. Point the gun to Clifton Court forebay upstream and fire away!

Call the Air Super-Peripheral, or Super Cap gun.

Imagine a column of water produced in top Valley and falling to say cubic 9,000 feet per second. Pretty scary, especially if the barrel is a bit off target and Tracy pipes.
 

The Reber Plan
Unlike Cornell pipe-less dreams, plan John Reber to quench the thirst of the actually took flight - for a spell. Reber, a theatre producer who himself engineer, advertising of the dams on the San Francisco Bay to capture and store the flow of fresh water for the export to the Southern California by channel, not guns.

A dam would be between Richmond and Marin County and another bridge of San Francisco and Oakland, creating two giant fresh water lakes. The dams would be roads that could carry up to 32 lanes of traffic, as well as train tracks. Reber also sought to reduce the Bay with 20,000 acres of fill for development, including military bases.

KQED

Reber idea created a media buzz and enthusiasm of some members of Congress. The public works of the Senate Committee held hearings in San Francisco and then recommended the Army Corps of Engineers to build a model of the Bay to test "the Reber plan." The model of 1.5 hectares, that mimics the action of tides, currents and the mixture of fresh and salt water, showed that the Bay-Delta estuary would be destroyed. Freshwater dams would create only giant evaporation ponds.

You can watch the simulation to model Bay Visitors Center the army in Sausalito. Watch the ghost of John Reber at low tide.

The California Water Plan. State Dept resources. of Water, 1957

1957 California water plan
It is not blood stains that you see in this vision of 1957 the future California water. However, red blobs should send chills down your spine. They mean potential reservoirs. That's right, almost all of the Klamath River and most of the Trinity River systems and eel would become chains of Lakes. Regardless of the salmon.

A series of pumping stations that negated the flow South to the Sacramento Valley and in through giant pumps Delta to farms and cities in the South.

At a time of apparent unlimited growth, the State Department of water resources has developed the California Water Plan (Bulletin n ° 3) to "demonstrate that the capacity exists to meet all foreseeable water needs in all areas of the State.

"We can do it. It is engineeringly and financially viable, said William l. Berry, head of the Ministry of water resources, planning, speaking in 1956 at a Fresno public hearing on the plan. "What is more, we have to start the task - and promptly - whether California should remain the"Golden State"in what some call the"golden age"in which we enter."

The proposed California water system would be the great equalizer of the water resources, redistribute the "excess" of the North of Central California water less gifted and Southern California. But plans for the filming of the rivers of the North coast in the tanks remained just that - plans, which are today better kept in the closet, as skeletons.

References and additional reading
John Metcalfe. October 3, 2012. A look back on "Big Squirt, 1951's' Concept of cure unlikely California drought." The cities of the Atlantic.

Ron Blatman, public television KQED/KTEH. The Reber Plan: A great idea for the San Francisco Bay area.

Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Bay Bridge: bridging the Campus, not built projects.

June Morrall. November 1, 2007. Bay to the Lake: a Plan of the late 1940s have failed would have turned San Francisco Bay in two lakes. Halfmoon Bay memories.
Bay model Visitor Center, US Army Corps of Engineers and

The California Water Plan, Bulletin n ° 3. Sacramento, California. California Department of Water Resources, 1957.