During the resurgence of hydropower development in the United States, occurring over the last fifteen years, the industry experienced significant growing pains, driven partly by a desire on the part of project sponsors to maximize returns on their investments. Oftentimes severe time constraints and financial pressures to bring a project on line within a fixed budget, have led many of us as designers to make tradeoffs between construction quality, long-term reliability, and initial capital costs. And while these tradeoffs seem appropriate at the time, as we all know, they can result in difficulties for the project owner down the road.
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