Few things in this world are more impressive than Hoover Dam, a 726 foot tall curtain of concrete and steel spanning a precipitous desert gorge carved out by the Colorado River and extending in a gentle convex sweep nearly 1,250 feet at the top to join both sides of the canyon.
The Bureau of Reclamation has reported that there are 4,360,000 cubic yards of cement in the dam itself, the power plant and the ancillary structures, enough to fill about 400,000 cement mixer trucks, which if lined up end-to-end, would stretch from San Francisco to Des Moines, Iowa, with a hundred extra miles to spare.
The base of the dam measures 660 feet thick but tapers to a comparatively svelte 46 feet wide at the top, providing enough room for a two-lane road to traverse the canyon and connect the states of Arizona and Nevada. Hoover Dam also acts as a massive flood control barrier, backstopping Lake Mead, one of the largest man-made reservoirs in the world.
Equally remarkable is the quantity of electrical power generated by Hoover Dam which, as of 2021, topped 4 billion kw annually, enough electricity to provide for the needs of 1.3 million people. Although nearly a hundred workers lost their lives during the construction of the dam, it was completed two years ahead of schedule in 1936 and provided employment for thousands of workers during the most desperate days of the Great Depression.
It cost about $50 million in 193 — a veritable bargain even when the dollars are adjusted for inflation to the current equivalent of nearly $700 million — a sum our omniscient government spent almost every hour of every day in 2022, according to the U.S. Treasury.
In some ways, Hoover Dam seems almost antiquated and quaint; it is a black and white photograph in our history books that is almost a hundred years removed in time.
It was designed by engineers who did their calculations with pencil and paper, funded by a stingy Congress, and constructed by a consortium of companies tightly overseen by the Bureau of Reclamation. Despite enormous logistical and engineering challenges, it was completed in only five years.
Even so, Hoover Dam lacks the glitz and glamour of today's mega construction projects such as the California high speed rail project, a gleaming but largely imaginary 800-mile network of high-speed tracks originally designed to link Los Angeles and San Francisco with a 2½ hour bullet train ride.
This project was initially projected to cost $33 billion (or the equivalent of nearly 50 Hoover Dams) when the original bond was approved by California's perennially optimistic voters in 2008. It was also advertised as having an estimated completion date of 2020, which, of course, will likely prove to be at least 60 years premature.
Bullet trains have been built in Europe and Asia since the 1950s so there was no reason to think that a similar project could not succeed in California. But the pristine world of mathematical calculations and engineering studies soon collided with the messy, murky world of California politics.
The original plan did not follow the most direct route up the coast but instead, due to political considerations, was shifted west through the Mohave Desert, ostensibly to reach rapidly growing suburbs and service a potentially wider ridership. Over the years, the original route was modified several more times, diverting the route through far-flung farmlands and mountain ranges.
More recently, the endpoint strategy was dropped altogether and construction was finally initiated on a scaled-down 171-mile starter route in the middle part of the state between Bakersfield and Merced with a bargain-basement $23 billion price-tag slated for completion by 2030.
Because the project continues to fall behind schedule and the completion costs are now estimated by the rail authority to exceed $110 billion as of 2022, many are skeptical that the original project will ever be completed — particularly because there is no major source of funding for the remainder of the route.
Maybe the piecemeal approach is the best hope for California's bullet train. Perhaps the starter route will provide the operational model that may one day allow the balance of the project to be completed — possibly before the onset of the next Ice Age.
Because California has a porous political system in which many actors can slow or stymie a mega project altogether, however, the high speed rail authority and the legislature must create a new compact whereby the authority is given complete autonomy and the funding to finish each stage of the project without the crippling interference of outside parties.
This top-down approach served Hoover Dam well; whether it is even realistic in 21st century California remains to be seen.
Jefferson Hane Weaver is a transactional lawyer residing in Florida. He received his undergraduate degree in Economics and Political Science from the University of North Carolina and his J.D. and Ph.D. in International Relations from Columbia University. Dr. Weaver is the author of numerous books on varied compelling subjects. Read more of his reports — Here.
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