Harold Kester, a Builder of Hydropower in the American West

摘要

During the 1930s through successive decades, extensive large-scale hydropowerfacilities were built in the West of North America. Large dams fitted with complicatedhydropower plants, such as Grand Coulee and Hoover Dams, were designed and built inremarkably short periods. Though much attention has been given to the hydraulic designof these facilities, little attention has been given (by hydraulic engineers) to theconstruction challenges faced when building them. The story of the work carried out byHarold Kester and his construction company usefully illustrates these challenges. Kester constructed hydropower facilities for dams on the Columbia, Colorado andMissouri Rivers, as well as elsewhere in the American West. Though several large damswere built during the 1930s to provide hydropower and Depression-era jobs in the West,the major period of hydropower development in the West and around the world occurredduring the 1950s through the early 1980s. New dams were built, and existing damsreceived major upgrades in hydropower capacity during this period. Kester's career inhydropower construction began in the late 1940s and extended into the 1980s.Hydropower development in the West had practically halted with the United States' entryinto World War II, but resurged greatly after the War. He was at the forefront of effortsto construct large-scale hydropower facilities in the West. Among his accomplishmentsare the installation of the world's largest hydropower turbines and generators for anupgrading of Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River, and the construction of a secondlarge hydropower house for Fort Peck Dam, at the time the world's biggest earthfill dam.These accomplishments entailed over-coming problems associated with the preciseconstruction of the massive concrete and steel structures linking reservoirs to hydropowerturbines and the river channels downstream.