Hoover Dam

Thursday Bob and I picked up Jim from the airport ('fresh' from two nights of red eye flights and a career fair) and headed for Boulder City, Nevada. I wouldn't be surprised if you've never heard of Boulder City, NV but we were there to visit a world famous landmark - the Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam (originally named the Boulder Dam) was completed in 1936. At the time it was the world's largest electric power generating station and the world's largest concrete structure. It has since been recognized as one of the 7 wonders of the industrialized world.

The Hoover Dam and its reservoir, Lake Mead, were incredible sights to see! The dam is so large that I could not get the entirety of it in one picture. And speaking of large, Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States - with a water volume of over 28 million acre-feet. This is enough water to cover the entire state of Connecticut to the depth of 10 feet.

The Hoover Dam is so massive that I could not get the whole structure in one picture.

I was able to get two videos that hopefully will give you an idea of its magnitude.




Due to a prolonged drought Lake Mead is currently 80' below the normal water line - as shown by the calcination of the newly exposed rocks. This has reduced the reservoirs' normal storage capacity of two years worth of water down to less than one year's worth of stored water.

The Hoover Dam holds back the used-to-be-unpredictable Colorado River. Due to the dam, the river no longer floods vulnerable downstream towns and cities like Yuma, AZ. The Colorado River serves as the state border separating southeast Nevada from central west Arizona - as indicated by a plaque at the midpoint of the dam.

Bob in Nevada, Jim in Arizona (while in AZ we kept a watchful eye out for cops on bikes...)

Jim and I on the Arizona side

While there we took the dam tour which was very cool - more so for the two engineers (Jim and I) rather than the marketing specialist (Bob). The tour took us underground to the penstocks (water diversion pipes that are 50' in diameter) that are carved into the canyon walls. Unbelievably, the penstocks and other large diameter piping was designed, fabricated, and installed by my employer - Babcock & Wilcox.

50' diameter penstocks used to divert the river during the initial build and to transport Colorado River water from Lake Mead to the water turbines.

Babcock & Wilcox made it on the contractor's plaque(5th line down).

Also included in the tour was a visit to the turbine deck. There are eight water turbines on the Nevada side and nine more on the Arizona side. Essentially, water spins the turbine blades which in turn spins a generator that produces electricity. These 17 turbines combine for a total of 2,080 megawatts (MW) - that double the capacity of an average nuclear sized power plant!

The Nevada turbine deck - 2,080 MW can power roughly 2,080,000 homes.

Looking down on the Arizona Powerhouse.

As the dam tour concluded, the dam tour guide dropped us off at a dam museum. Jim and I slowly worked our way through the museum looking at each display and reading all the plaques. Once we were about half way through, we noticed that Bob was no where in sight... When we finally finished perusing through the exhibits we found Bob patiently sitting on a bench in the lobby waiting for us haha Apparently the inner workings of the water turbines/generators and the innovative concrete construction techniques weren't as interesting to someone who hasn't taken Fluid Mechanics and Material Science - who knew?

The coup de grace of the amazing dam and reservoir visit was the US 93 Bypass Bridge. The bridge is still under construction and will be named the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge after Mike O'Callaghan, former NV governor and Korean War veteran, and Pat Tillman, Arizona Cardinals football player killed in Afghanistan. The purpose of the bridge is to divert the large semi truck and commercial bus traffic from having to drive over the dam -- ostensibly for terrorist related reasons...

US 93 Bypass Bridge construction.