Big impact at Glen Canyon Dam

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WA ER

Brought Industrial benefits all over the United States.

Big Impact

Glen Canyon

Dam

NOVEMBER 1967

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equip-ment to build Glen Canyon Dam-one of the highest concrete dams in the world-a

many-phased project was begun which would bring

long-needed water resource developments to the Colo-rado River Basin and a large part of the West.

To do the work, the builders purchased and shipped to the northern Arizona damsite more than 1.1 million tons of materials and equipment from throughout the Nation-a weight equivalent to about half a million automobiles. This does not in-clude the preponderant weight of the dam, which was sand, aggregates, and water, available at or near the site.

Then it required 25,000 man-years of direct

on-site and indirect off-on-site employment, or the equiv-alent of 5,000 men working 5 years each, to

com-plete the job.

Started in 1!)57 and completed in 1966, the con-struction cost of the 710-foot-high Glen Canyon

Dam added up to $243 million, as of Dec. 31, 1966.

Its water storage capacity is greater than all other storage features of the Colorado River Storage

Project combined.

Huge jet valves for water.

The dam is viewed with other major distinc-tions: It's powerhouse contains 900,000 kilowatts of commercial power capacity, which will pay for the costs of building the dam with interest over the years. It caused the impoundment of Lake Powell which already is world famous for its varied sport pleasantries. The dam also is respon-sible for irrigation, flood control and silt

retention.

The construction information herein has been newly collected by the Bureau of Reclamation as an important guide in establishing, on selected projects, scheduling and purchasing efficiencies for its varied program, and to reflect how much and where industrial impact occurs.

It cost $110 million for the permanent materials and equipment noted above.

Cost of shipping the materials and equipment by train, truck, and airplane from all off-site loca-tions was an additional $10 million.

Regional Suppliers

Since the dam is located in the Southwest, that large region supplied 41 percent of the shipping.

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The States include Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and New :\fexico, and the purchases came to $49.5

mil-lion.

Next highest supplier was the Mideast and X ew England regions, where 17 percent, totaling $21.1 million, was purchased. )fore than 60 percent of all electrical equipment came from the industrial-ized Mideast region alone-largely from

Pennsyl-vania, New York, and New Jersey.

5 million man-hours by workmen. (Photo by A. E. Turner)

United States Department of the Interior, Stewart L. Udall, Secretary

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Bureau of Reclamation, Floyd E. Dominy, Commissioner

Issued quarterly by the Bureau ot Reclamation, United States Department of the Interior, Wash-logtoo, D.C. 20240. Use ot funds tor printing this publication approved by the Director of the Bureau of the Budget, January 31, 1966.

For ~ale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402. Price 30 cents (single copy). Subscription price: $1.00 per year (25 cents additional for foreign malling).

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OLEN CAHVON O,,\M ANO POWERP\.ANT Olflte.CT CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL,

l!QUIPMt.NT.ANO ,-fltt:IGHT fltf.QUllll!t.Me.NTS &UPP\.ICO ev ALL ,u.e,oNS ~ T ~ NATtON

Almost the same percentage and dollar value of

shipments came from the Far ,vest region of

Cali-fornia, Oregon, ,Yashington, and Xernda.

Industry in the Rocky :\fountain region supplied

1:3 percent, amounting to $16.2 million.

Shipments of materials and equipment from the Great Lakes area achieved a total value of $6.3 million. Two-percent, regions were the Southeast, with $2.5 million, and the Plains, with $2.04: mil-lion in shipments.

Hence, nearly 60 percent of the supplies for this great construction project originated beyond the borders of the geographic region in which the dam was built. This bears out a claim long made by Bureau of Reclamation officials that Reclamation

construction benefits all parts of the Nation.

Materials shipped in for the vast construction

job were 60 times greater than the equipment ton-nage. The largest item, by far, was concrete pro-ducts, totaling 807,200 tons. Rubber, petroleum,

and repair products were next, with 125,100 tons. Metal products came to 60,700 tons. Other major shipment tonnages: chemicals and explosives, 24,-200; building materials, 20,300; and misceJlaneous materials, 60,500 tons.

Shipments of equipment used in construction of the dam totaled 17,800 tons. :\fost of this was made up of electrical equipment, 6,300 tons, and motized equipment, 5,900 tons. Next in descending or-der were concrete equipment, construction tools, housing equipment, office and engineering equip-ment, asphalt, and miscellaneous equipment.

Employment Requirements

.\ majority of the construction men and their families, whose livelihood came from their work at the dam resided in the modern town of Page, which was built at the site.

The total direct employment requirements for designing and constructing the entire Glen Canyon

NOVEMBER 1967

feature was over 25 million man-hours. Except for Government planning, design, and administrative activities at the Bureau of Reclamation·s Regional Office in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Chief En-gineer's office in Denver, Colo., the labor require-ments were all at the construction site. On-site

con-struction contract forces were both skilled and

unskilled. About one-third of the workers with

special skills or experience came from States other

than Arizona where the work was going on. Nineteen percent, or 5 million man-hours, were performed by nonskilled laborers. The amount of work by machine operators and carpenters was about equal, at between 2.8 million and 2.6 million man-hours. The remaining work was by truck-drivers, iron workers, electricians, plumbers and cement masons, and others.

It also is significant that 24 million man-hours-an equivalent of 12,000 mman-hours-an-years-of employ-ment benefits resulted at locations other than the dam. These were in mining, manufacturing, trans-portation, wholesale and retail trade, agriculture, and such fields. This included 13 million man-hours of primary employment in the final stages of the direct material and equipment requirements, and 11 million man-hours of secondary interindus-try employment in processing materials and deliv-ering them to the manufacturer.

It so happened that on-site and off-site efforts were quite near being equal. There were 56 man-years of direct on-site labor and 48 man-man-years of indirect off-site labor for each $1 million of total

construction cost.

Estimates have not been made of the multiplier benefits wherein employees and businesses respend their wages and profits for other goods and serv-ices. However, it may be concluded with certainty that Federal construction of such projects as Glen Canyon Dam hiwe been economically worthwhile to the region and the Nation. # # #