HOOVER DAM USA , A NATION’S PRIDE! : A MEMORABLE SUMMER VISIT TO HOOVER DAM on 16th JUNE 2014 (VN-DN/ NS-MS-AdS-AyS), I (VN) made my second and most memorable visit to the Hoover Dam , Lake Mead (reservoir), and Tillman Bridge (on the new By-pass Road), Arizone-Nevada, USA on 16 June 2014 in the company of my wife (DN) and son/ his family (DrNS/ Dr MS/Ms AdS/Master AyS). It is a marvelous creation of humans (USA citizens- engineers, scientists, workers etc) and continues to be one of the first few largest concrete arch dams in the world (once irt was largest…). Details are available in WIKIPEDIA (links: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam usbr.gov/lc/region/pao/brochures/faq.html#geology I feel every Geologist/ Engineering Geologist/ Geotechnologist/ Civil – Power Engineer/ Environmentalist/ Geo-Eco-Tpurism Enthusiast etc must visit this dam once in his life-time………. Hoover Dam, once known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The dam was controversially named after President Herbert Hoover. Hoover Dam impounds Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States by volume.[5] The dam is located near Boulder City, Nevada, a municipality originally constructed for workers on the construction project, about 30 mi (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The dams generators provide power for public and private utilities in Nevada, Arizona, and California. Hoover Dam is a major tourist attraction; nearly a million people tour the dam each year. Heavily travelled U.S. 93 ran along the dams crest until October 2010, when the Hoover Dam Bypass opened. Till man Bridge, over the Colorado R , immediately located just downstream of the Hoover Dam, is located on it. It is 726.4 feet from foundation rock to the roadway on the crest of the dam. The towers and ornaments on the parapet rise 40 feet above the crest. The foundation and abutments are rock of volcanic origin geologically called andesite breccia. The rock is hard and very durable. Took five years for completion in all.. The contractors were allowed 7 years from April 20, 1931, but concrete placement in the dam was completed May 29, 1935, and all features were completed by March 1, 1936. There are 17 main turbines in Hoover Powerplant. The original turbines were all replaced through an uprating program between 1986 and 1993. With a rated capacity of 2,991,000 horsepower, and two station-service units rated at 3,500 horsepower each, for a plant total of 2,998,000 horsepower, the plant has a nameplate capacity of 2,074,000 kilowatts. This includes the two station-service units, which are rated at 2,400 kilowatts each. Geology: The Hoover Dam area contains exposures of Precambrian metamorphic rock, Tertiary volcanic and plutonic rock, and Quaternary gravels .Paleozoic rocks are restricted to roof pendants in Tertiary plutons and xenolithic blocks in mafic lava flows. With rare exception, rocks of the Hoover Dam area have been broken along numerous late Miocene faults with complex slip components and the Mead Slope left-lateral strike-slip fault. The highly eroded surface of the tuff of Hoover Dam Is unconformably overlain by two units; a dacitic breccia and a separate andesitic flow breccia (both mapped as Tbr) and the Spillway conglomerate (Tsc). These units are restricted to out-crops at Hoover Dam. For more details, visit:Link: nbmg.unr.edu/dox/m102text.pdf Photographs taken by VN/DN/NS/MS are being posted . Some photos among these have clear geological/geotechnical/eco perspective. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 10:39:09 +0000
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