I followed a rather circuitous route to get to CH2M HILL and had some very interesting and challenging experiences on the way. Like many of my generation, it took 8 years to get my degree in Civil Engineering in 1948. I attended two different universities and the Army Air Corps Cadet program.
After graduating from Santa Clara, I had the choice of going to work for the California Division of Highways doing roads or the Bureau of Reclamation doing major water projects. Luckily, I chose water and went to Chico as a junior engineer where the Bureau had a significant planning office. I joined the Bureau at an opportune time, as there were several major projects being considered for development. My first assignment was to develop area and capacity curves for all of the major dam and reservoir sites in the Feather River Basin. That took 3 months and was a bit boring but necessary. The significant conclusion of these analyses was the conceptual plan for Oroville Dam and Reservoir that the State decided it wanted to build as the keystone of the State Water Project. At this point, I was assigned to the Trinity River planning. I was responsible for all the hydrology and reservoir operation studies that determined the water and power output for the sizing of the dam, tunnels, and power plants. The operation studies involved the entire Central Valley Project including Shasta, Folsom, and San Luis Dams.
After the first draft of the Trinity Report, I could not see much future with Reclamation and went to work for a classmate of mine in underground construction in the Bay Area. By the end of 3 years, I had had enough of the Bay Area and construction and, fortunately, I was offered the job to establish a department of water resources for Shasta County. That is where I first met Clair Hill, who interviewed me for the job. For 4 years, I worked on all sorts of assignments; and it was here that I really got involved in Political Engineering. They wanted me to help them obtain congressional authorization of the Trinity Project and to support the Whiskeytown Dam as an enhancement to the project that would be of great benefit to the local area. Though I had met our Congressman Clair Engle (chairman of the Water and Power sub-committee of the House Interior Committee) while working in Chico, I really got well acquainted with him and worked with him on the authorizing legislation and participated in testimony before the Congressional hearings.
During this same period, the California Water Plan studies were being finalized; and a lot of the plans affected Shasta County. I was deeply involved in review of their work with extensive oral and written comments to reflect the County’s interest. In addition, there was a lot going on in the State Legislature relating to water that required my testimony. In one case, with the help of a good Sacramento water attorney, I sponsored legislation that established the Shasta County Water Agency. I was also very fortunate to be able to review Clair Engle’s legislation that led to the passage of the Small Reclamation Project Act, under which CAH&A (Clair A. Hill and Associates) and CH2M HILL later did so much irrigation project work.
By the end of 4 years, I had just about exhausted my stay with the County. Clair had one of the first small project loans under the program to process for Georgetown Public Utility District (PUD). He wanted me to handle it for him, so he offered me a job in 1958. That involved a 165-foot dam up in the American River. Attending all the National Water Resources Association meetings while at the County and having worked for the Bureau, I already knew a lot of the Reclamation people, so it was a perfect fit for me.
Within 2 months of going to work for Clair, Glenn Colusa Irrigation District wanted me to help negotiate a complicated water rights settlement contract that involved the hydrology of the entire Sacramento River Basin and took 6 years before the Secretary of Interior accepted the District’s proposal. This led to all sorts of work for the District, and I understand the company is still working for them.
Clair had me checked out in his airplanes as soon as I got there, and this allowed me to follow up on many of my contacts in Eastern Oregon and Washington. I knew Harlan had a lot of contact with CH2M, but I knew nothing more than he had a great respect for their capabilities. My first contact with CH2M came as a result of my complaint to Clair at one of our director’s meetings that our steno pool was doing a lousy job. The next morning, he called me in to his office and told me that I was in charge of making improvements. Well, I had heard quite a bit about CH2M, probably from Harlan; and either he or Clair put me in touch with Jim Howland. I went to CVO and had a great welcome by Jim and got a few ideas to get me started. I found Betty Primrose, and we got things turned around in a hurry.
My real introduction to CH2M HILL was when I suddenly had a new boss that I had never met and knew essentially nothing about. There was a lot of logic in the merger, as we were doing a lot of work with the irrigators in Eastern Oregon. CH2M wanted to move into the sanitary work in California, and the Clair Hill name could open a lot of doors. I soon found that Holly Cornell was great to work with as my first close association with a number of real competent people. The regional managers, Jim Poirot in SEA, Les Wierson in PDX, and Earl Reynolds in BOI, all welcomed me and assisted me in developing staff in particular for Irrigation District work.
I admired Earl for finding and hiring competent Legislative Affairs help in WDC, and I kind of think that Jim Poirot stepped up that office a notch when he took over. Dick Corrigan was outstanding in his assignment. Although he knew nothing about water or any of the key water resources staff in the Department of Interior or the congressional members and staff of the authorizing and appropriations committees, within a year I believe he knew them all by first name.
The Discipline Directors as a whole were an outstanding group, and it was quite interesting to see how the Discipline Matrix evolved into an effective organization. And, of course, the brilliant mind behind that organization was Archie Rice; and I think Holly Cornell deserves a lot of the credit for implementing it. At the time of the merger, all the agriculture engineers, soil scientists, and hydrologists were in RDD; and one of my responsibilities was to supplement staff in the other regions. As an example of one of these steps, I tried to get Bob Charley to move to PDX, but he resisted the move for almost a year. But once there, he not only enjoyed it but went on to a number of successes.
Early on at CAH&A, Harlan and I both were deeply involved in our own rather large projects. But when he became regional manager and later president, we had a much closer professional relationship. I was not involved personally in the various large projects that he developed but later on found out how extensive some of the projects were and how both he and Gene Suhr worked closely with our Congressman, Bizz Johnson, who became chairman of the Public Works Committee.
At the time of my retirement, I could see that the upcoming Ralph Peterson, who had just negotiated the first large hazardous waste contract, was heading for much greater things. He is just one more example of the firm’s talented and dedicated managers in the company who have carried on the principles laid down by the founders. And what’s big today makes our $70 million Yakima Tieton Rehab project (I thought it was big) of the early 80s look pretty small.
Harlan has retired to the mountains again. There is a very good golf course up there; and Bob Charley, Don Fox, and I occasionally play with him up there where it is a bit cooler than Redding. It’s great to find there is something at which I could outdo Harlan. Working with CAH&A and CH2M HILL was a great experience, and I enjoyed the association with a lot of great people that I considered family.