Environmental and Water Resources: Milestones in Engineering History

Hoover Dam is one of the icons in civil and water resources engineering history and visited by very large numbers of people each year. The following Hoover Dam photographs were taken in the 1940s by Ansel Adams, a famous western photographer, and provided from the Bureau of Reclamation from photographs held in the WPA (Work Projects Administration) collections of the Still Pictures Branch, Archives II, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. Other archived Hoover Dam photos were provided by the Bureau of Reclamation.

James Pugh Kirkwood was born in Edinburgh, Scotland March 27, 1807 and died in Brooklyn April 22, 1877. In the 1830s, Kirkwood came to the U.S. and worked as an engineer on several railroads, including the expensive Starrucca Viaduct for the Erie Railroad in PA. Kirkwood became an environmental engineering specialist in municipal water works with Brooklyn, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Albany, and served for Lynn, MA in 1877. His 1869 book on water filtration practices in Europe was important to the civil and environmental engineering profession. Three sanitary (environmental) engineers: J. W. Adams, A. W. Craven (Croton Aqueduct) and Kirkwood of six civil engineers placed their names on the October 23, 1852 invitation letter to found ASCEA (and Architects) on November 5, 1852 when twelve engineers visited the Croton Aqueduct Building near Rotunda Park in NYC. Kirkwood served as an ASCEA Director from 1853–1867. In 1867 James P. Kirkwood became the second National President of ASCE. Kirkwood's inaugural ASCE Presidential address became the first ASCE paper in the first Transactions of ASCE.

Developments in filtration of public drinking water supplies from after the Civil War to the present time are reviewed, based in part on information in The Quest for Pure Water, 2^nd Ed., published by the American Water Works Association (AWWA) in 1981. Slow sand filtration was applied during the latter 1800s. In the early 1900s after George Fuller's testing program at Louisville, the capabilities of coagulation, sedimentation, and filtration were better understood and began to be applied to municipal water supplies. Additional technical developments in the 1900s resulted in more effective and efficient water filtration and pretreatment processes. The role of James P. Kirkwood in bringing information on European water filtration practice to the United States and his influence on water treatment practice are discussed.

This paper presents an overview of the 60 year history of the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences. The University of Florida, along with the University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State, and Rutgers were the original five graduate sanitary engineering programs in the United States. This history is divided into three periods: 1948–1966 when the program was housed in Civil Engineering; 1966–1972 when the new graduate Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences was formed; and 1972 to present with an undergraduate environmental engineering major added to the graduate program. The last part of the paper describes future goals for the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences.

Sanitary engineering was a distinct component of engineering when the Department of Engineering was created at The University of Texas at Austin in 1894. In 1936 the sanitary engineering option in the Civil Engineering program was accredited by the ECPD and continues today as an option in the undergraduate ABET accredited Civil Engineering program. The graduate program in Sanitary Engineering was approved in 1947 by the Graduate School and in 1962 the name was changed to Environmental Health Engineering and the EHE program was accredited at the advanced level (M.S.E.) by ABET in 1963. The name of the graduate program was changed to Environmental and Water Resources Engineering (EWRE) in 1998. EAC/ABET accredited the MSE-EWRE program in 2005 through 2011 resulting in more than 48 years of continuous accreditation of the environmental engineering graduate program. This paper focuses on the history of the graduate program.

The Lower Rio Grande Valley roots start with early Spanish and Mexican-American settlements along the Rio Grande River in the mid-1700's. It took a lot of grit and determination to live and work in the Valley. Early Valley history is characterized by border wars, politics, and agricultural developments and misappropriated public money. Some of the early drama of the Valley is captured as Texas Online traces the history of one such county — Hidalgo County.

The Maya, America's first civil engineers developed unique water resource technologies that successfully supported a dense population of 1800 to 2600 people per square mile. This unique engineering accomplishment was but one of the technical advancements achieved by the Maya during their 2000-year history. Archaeologists considered the Maya to be a "stone age" culture; however, this science-based society built a scientifically advanced culture while Europe languished in the Dark Ages. This ingenious culture developed technologies, and sciences that were not "discovered" by the Europeans until the nineteenth century. These unique technological achievements were the result of integrating native ingenium with synergistic management to plan and construct a complex infrastructure. This infrastructure included efficient water management systems that enhanced the inconstant natural water supply. The Maya engineers developed projects that provided potable water, irrigation of agriculture and aquaculture, water storage systems, reclamation of storm water, flood control, and road and bridge construction. These lost landmarks of civil engineering were hidden for centuries by the tropical rainforest. Recently, the unique accomplishments of the Maya engineers were uncovered by a new field of archaeo-engineering using state-of-the-art forensic engineering techniques.

In 1718 Spanish Missionaries established permanent settlements in San Antonio and immediately began constructing a system of irrigation ditches, or acequias, to divert water from the San Antonio River and San Pedro Creek to irrigate hundreds of acres of farmland. The acequias were so well built that the Acequia Madre, built between 1731 and 1745 still provides irrigation water for 400 acres of farms, establishing it as the oldest continuously working acequia in the country. This presentation will follow 300 years of water infrastructure in San Antonio and along the way touch on how important water is to a thriving community.

The city of Versailles sits 130 to 140 meters above sea-level, surrounded by wooded hills. In 1661, Louis XIV decided to construct his palace in Versailles. The main problem that was facing the engineers was to supply water to the king's palace and its gardens and fountains. The king wanted the water to be furnished continuously. Due to the palace location, supplying water to the site was like a dream and even the several links between the nearby ponds and reservoirs were becoming inefficient. Two brilliant engineers "Arnold de Ville" and "Rennequin Sualem" started the construction of the "Machine de Marly" that was considered the biggest hydraulic system ever built. This machine was able to deliver water from the Seine River at an elevation of 162 meters and pumped nearly five thousand cubic meters of water a day. This gigantic machine solved the problem for several years until the 19^th century when it was destroyed because of inefficiency.

Florida's five water management districts have joined forces with the Water Management Institute (a private not-for-profit 501(3) (C) educational corporation) to capture and chronicle the History of Water Management in Florida. The project has been split into two major components: undertaking a series of oral history interviews with people that have been important to the History of Water Management in Florida; and developing an archive for documents and other information. Florida will have the 50^th Anniversary of the 1957 Water Resources Act in 2007.

Establishment of a national experimental watershed program grew out of early, depression era efforts by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) with the 1930's conservation motto of "stop the water where it falls". A central component of this watershed program was the Agricultural Research Service's (ARS) National Experimental Watershed Network that was authorized by Senate Document 59.

The United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed (WGEW) has served as an outdoor laboratory for the study of semi-arid hydrology, erosion and sedimentation since the 1950s. This paper presents an overview of the core WGEW instrumentation network, its development, and evolution. The need for specialized instruments to measure high velocity, short duration, sediment laden flow that characterize semi-arid regions and the development of the Walnut Gulch Supercritical Depth Runoff Measuring Flume are described. Recent upgrades to the instrumentation network include conversion from analog to digital recording methods, automated radio-based data transfer from sensors to a centralized computer network, and access to data via the Internet. The WGEW is a critical resource for enhancing our scientific understanding of semi-arid hydrology and ecosystems and the impact of their interactions on water supply and quality.

The Goodwin Creek Experimental Watershed (GCEW) was established in north central Mississippi by U.S. Congressional action and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Sedimentation Laboratory (NSL) has operated the watershed since October, 1981. Since then, the watershed has provided a platform for research ranging from watershed hydrology, stream fluvial studies for sediment transport relationship development and channel evolution, stream restoration, landuse effects on sediment load, sediment source identification, climatic changes, and watershed and channel model development. This paper will discuss the historical perspective and national impact of this climatological, hydrological, fluvial, and sedimentation research collected at the watershed.

The history of hydrologic research at the Riesel, TX, site dates to the mid 1930's when the United States Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service (USDA-SCS) realized a need to analyze and understand hydrologic processes of agricultural fields and watersheds and their impact on soil erosion, flood events, water resources, and the agricultural economy. As a result, the Blacklands Experimental Watershed was established in 1937 and remains in operation today as part of the USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) Grassland, Soil and Water Research Laboratory. The Riesel watershed (as well as experimental watersheds located near Hastings, NE, and Coshocton, OH) were established within the research program of USDA-SCS to collect hydrologic data and to evaluate the hydrologic and soil loss response as influenced by various agricultural land management practices. A major contribution of the original three watersheds is the quantification of soil loss reduction under conservation management, which has led to drastic reduction in soil loss from cultivated agriculture since the early 20th century. More recently, research at Riesel established fundamental understanding of the agronomic and environmental effects of tillage, fertilizer, and chemical alternatives. Riesel watershed data and analyses also produced the scientific basis for several watershed models that are now used worldwide to manage water quality. An enhanced understanding of Texas Blackland Prairie hydrology has also resulted because of the continuous, long-term hydrologic data record and associated analyses. Because of their historical and future value, USDA-ARS has a unique responsibility to maintain such long-term watershed research sites to help meet future issues related to water availability, environmental quality, and food and fiber production.

The North Appalachian Experimental Watershed (NAEW) at Coshocton, Ohio was established during the mid 1930s as one of the first watershed research locations in the US. The mission of the outdoor laboratory facility is to determine the effects of land-management practices on hydrology and erosion, to investigate scaling from small plots to large watersheds, and to determine rates and amounts of runoff from watersheds of varying configuration, shape, cover, topography, land-management practice. The NAEW infrastructure consists of approximately 1050 acres that includes large lysimeters, small and large experimental watersheds, and a network of rain gauges. One of the first land-management practices investigated was an intensive study on the effects of a crop rotation on steep watersheds with different soils. These early studies contributed to the development of the no-till concept for farming steep lands to reduce erosion and runoff. No-till has been investigated continuously for 43 years at the NAEW with the current emphasis on effects on soil quality, carbon sequestration, and crop residue removal for biofuel production. Data from Coshocton were included in the original development of the curve number method, which is used worldwide. Watershed studies investigations include effects of conservation tillage, herbicide and nutrient management, pasture management, coal mining and reclamation, and urbanization on hydrology and water quality. Other studies conducted throughout the history of the NAEW include those on rain gauges, soil carbon, evapotranspiration, precipitation simulation, ground-water recharge, curve numbers, macropores, hydraulics, watershed modeling, and instrumentation development. Expertise and data at the NAEW are sought after worldwide on these topics. The facility has unique features that enable it to contribute to watershed model component development, including identification and quantification of the processes of preferential flow, interflow, non-uniform runoff generation, and scaling. The NAEW continues to have an important impact on soil and water conservation.

The Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed was established over 40 years ago to conduct research and collect data to address critical water issues on western rangelands. Research focus on the watershed has changed over the past 40 years, starting initially with monitoring and describing hydrologic processes and migrating toward development of computer-based tools to address critical water supply, water quality and rangeland management problems. Data quality at the watershed has improved greatly with improved instrumentation but the type of data collected has also changed to meet new research needs. The combination of the long historic records, current data collection and support staff make RCEW a unique "outdoor laboratory" to address critical natural resource questions.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the City of Galveston was emerging as one of the most important cities in Texas. The City was the home to the third largest port in the country and was the second-most-heavily-traversed entry for immigrants from Europe. Then on September 8, 1900, the island was virtually wiped out by a hurricane (now classified as a Class 4). With approximately 8,000 to 10,000 fatalities, the event ranks as the deadliest natural disaster to hit the United States. In the wake of the destruction, Alfred Noble (who became ASCE's president in 1903) and Henry Robert (who authored Robert's Rules of Order) were hired as consultants. The engineering recommendation was to raise the structures on the island using 17 feet of hydraulic fill and to construct (on timber piles) a long concrete seawall. Railroad tracks were constructed along the wall to transport the extensive materials needed. All of the utilities for Galveston residents and businesses had to be relocated and raised. In 2001, ASCE recognized the contributions of the Galveston Seawall and Grade Raising and the Corps of Engineers with a ceremony and plaque for a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark (NHCEL). The account of the storm provided by U.S. Weather Bureau's meteorologist Isaac Cline in the bestseller "Isaac's Storm" are summarized. Engineering aspects of the grade raising and seawall are reviewed.

The July 1938 flood was a rain event that had approximately 30" of rainfall in less than a 10-day period. Centered over Brady Creek and the upper reaches of the Colorado Basin, the floods caused Buchanan Dam to open 22 of its 37 gates and flood areas such as downtown Austin, Bastrop, and Wharton. To help calibrate hydrologic models for the Colorado Basin for an LCRA/Army Corps of Engineers study, limited 1938 rainfall and stream flow data were collected from the Corps of Engineers and USGS for the 1938 flood and converted into electronic format. The rainfall data was used to produce Mean Areal Precipitation using the Corps of Engineers HEC-PRECIP program. The PRECIP output data was used as input to the 21,745 square mile HEC-HMS model of the Colorado River basin. This paper documents the source of the data used, the QA/QC methods used for the input and output of the data, comparisons of synthetic data results to observed data and the limitations and solutions to the various methods used to create the data needed for the hydrologic runs. The methodology of the process of re-creating electronic data to test and help calibrate hydrologic models is documented in the paper, as well as lessons learned about the response of river basins to large events such as the 1938 flood. This project also serves as an example of how history can help civil engineers working on hydrologic and hydraulic models.