robert trefzger - usbr.gov

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS

Robert Trefzger

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STATUS OF INTERVIEWS:OPEN FOR RESEARCH

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Interviews Conducted and Edited by:Brit Allan StoreySenior HistorianBureau of Reclamation

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Interviews conducted–1994Interview edited and published–2019

Oral History ProgramBureau of ReclamationDenver, Colorado

SUGGESTED CITATION:

Trefzger, Robert. ORAL HISTORYINTERVIEW. Transcript of tape-recorded Bureauof Reclamation oral history interviews conducted byGeorge Petershagen, Historian, Bureau ofReclamation, July 12, 1994, in Auburn, California. Edited by Brit Allan Storey, further edited anddesktop published by Andrew H. Gahan. Repository for the record copy of the transcript isthe National Archives and Records Administrationin College Park, Maryland, or the regional office inthe Denver, Colorado, area.

Record copies of this transcript are printed on 20lb., 100% cotton, archival quality paper. All other copiesare printed on normal duplicating paper.

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Statement of Donation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

Editorial Convention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Oral History Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Early Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Army Experience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3College Education. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Pre-Reclamation Experience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Going to Work For the Bureau of Reclamation

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Tecolote Tunnel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13New Contractor for Telecote Tunnel. . . . . . . . . . . 19Project Geologist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22Regional Geologist.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Region<s Geology Branch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28Trinity Division. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32San Luis Dam.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Auburn Dam.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36Geology in Dam Design.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38Subsidence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41Earthquake Problem at Auburn Dam. . . . . . . . . . . 45Dam Safety Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Spring Creek. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Robert Trefzger Oral History

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Kesterson Reservoir. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61Reclamation<s Relationships with Other Agencies

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65Region<s Relationship with Denver Office. . . . . . 67Supervisory Training. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70Reflections on Reclamation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Bureau of Reclamation History Program

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Statement of Donation


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v

Editorial Convention

A note on editorial conventions. In the text of theseinterviews, information in parentheses, ( ), is actually on thetape. Information in brackets, [ ], has been added to thetape either by the editor to clarify meaning or at the requestof the interviewee in order to correct, enlarge, or clarify theinterview as it was originally spoken. Words havesometimes been struck out by editor or interviewee in orderto clarify meaning or eliminate repetition. In the case ofstrikeouts, that material has been printed at 50% density toaid in reading the interviews but assuring that the struckoutmaterial is readable.

The transcriber and editor also have removed someextraneous words such as false starts and repetitionswithout indicating their removal. The meaning of theinterview has not been changed by this editing.

While we attempt to conform to most standardacademic rules of usage (see The Chicago Manual of Style),we do not conform to those standards in this interview forindividual’s titles which then would only be capitalized inthe text when they are specifically used as a title connectedto a name, e.g., “Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton” asopposed to “Gale Norton, the secretary of the interior;” or“Commissioner John Keys” as opposed to “thecommissioner, who was John Keys at the time.” Theconvention in the Federal government is to capitalize titlesalways. Likewise formal titles of acts and offices arecapitalized but abbreviated usages are not, e.g., Division ofPlanning as opposed to “planning;” the Reclamation


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Projects Authorization and Adjustment Act of 1992, asopposed to “the 1992 act.”

The convention with acronyms is that if they arepronounced as a word then they are treated as if they are aword. If they are spelled out by the speaker then they havea hyphen between each letter. An example is the Agencyfor International Development’s acronym: said as a word, itappears as AID but spelled out it appears as A-I-D; anotherexample is the acronym for State Historic PreservationOfficer: SHPO when said as a word, but S-H-P-O whenspelled out.


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Introduction

In 1988, Reclamation created a history program. Whileheadquartered in Denver, the history program wasdeveloped as a bureau-wide program.

One component of Reclamation's history program isits oral history activity. The primary objectives ofReclamation's oral history activities are: preservation ofhistorical data not normally available through Reclamationrecords (supplementing already available data on the wholerange of Reclamation's history); making the preserved dataavailable to researchers inside and outside Reclamation.

A note on the nature of oral histories is in order forreaders and researchers who have not worked with oralhistories in the past. We attempt to process Reclamation’soral histories so that speech patterns and verbiage arepreserved. Speech and formal written text vary greatly inmost individuals, and we do not attempt to turnReclamation’s oral histories into polished formal discourse. Rather, the objective during editing of interviews is toconvey the information as it was spoken during theinterview. However, editorial changes often are made toclarify or expand meaning, and those are shown in the text.

Questions, comments, and suggestions may beaddressed:

Andrew H. Gahan


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HistorianEnvironmental Compliance Division (84-53000)Policy and AdministrationBureau of ReclamationP. O. Box 25007Denver, Colorado 80225-0007For additional information about Reclamation’s

history program see:www.usbr.gov/history


http://www.usbr.gov/history

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Oral History Interview Robert Trefzger

Petershagen: This is George Petershagen conducting aninterview of Bob Trefzger for the U.S.Bureau of Reclamation's Oral HistoryProgram. Mr. Trefzger was a geologist forthe Bureau of Reclamation throughout hiscareer and has retired from the Bureau ofReclamation. Today's date is July 12, 1994,this is tape one, side A.

Bob, before we get into real details of yourcareer with the Bureau of Reclamation, Iwould like you to acknowledge that you'veconsented to tape recording this interview.

Trefzger: Yes, I've consented.

Petershagen: And that you understand that the Deed ofGift you signed makes this interview theproperty of the United States.

Trefzger: I understand.

Petershagen: And it will be open for researchers,historians and so forth as they attempt toexplore the history of Bureau ofReclamation.

Trefzger: Yes, I understand that.

Petershagen: Thank you! Let's start with your birth andchildhood if we could. Where and whenwere you born?


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Early Life

Trefzger: You mean you want the date?

Petershagen: If you know it! (laughs)

Trefzger: Yeah, I know it.

Petershagen: If you remember it.

Trefzger: Oh, I don't remember it, but I know it. Iwas born February 19, 1925, in Rochester,New York. The reason I was born there isbecause that's where my dad had a job. Within a few months, he was transferred toPasadena, California. So he and my motherand I came to California, via my mother'srelatives in Colorado, and settled down inPasadena, and they spent the rest of theirlives there, virtually.

Petershagen: So you're not technically a nativeCalifornian, but almost a life-longCalifornian.

Trefzger: Right. Yeah, I must have been on the orderof maybe six or seven months when I gothere to California.

Petershagen: And then you were raised in Pasadena?

Trefzger: I was raised in Pasadena.

Petershagen: You went to Pasadena schools?

Trefzger: Right.


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Petershagen: What high school did you go to?

Trefzger: Well Pasadena had a funny systemthere–they call it a six-four-four system,where you went six elementary grades, andthen you went in seventh grade to juniorhigh school, which lasted through tenthgrade, and then all the tenth gradegraduates–and there were five junior highschools–went to Pasadena Junior College totake the last two years of high school, and ifthey wanted, the first two years of college. That's the last four of the six-four-four.

Petershagen: I see.

Trefzger: And they don't do it that way any more, butthat's the way they did it when I was there.

Petershagen: Interesting. So you went through that entireprogram?

Army Experience

Trefzger: Well, I went through until the Armygrabbed me in 1943. Then I went in theservice and went down to Fort Benning forbasic training, and then they transferred abunch of us to the 94th Infantry Divisiondown in Camp McKay, Mississippi. Andfrom there we went through the P-O-E [Portof Embarkation] and we were sent over toEurope on the Queen Elizabeth, which wasquite an experience, because we didn'tknow about sonar and things like that, so


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we were all watching for subs. But theQueen Elizabeth zig-zagged every threeminutes going across the North Atlantic,and we arrived off the north coast of Irelandin about four days. They unloaded us in theFirth of Clyde, offshore from a town calledGrenagh. But we don't want to talk aboutmy military history.

Petershagen: Oh yeah, we do!

Trefzger: Oh, you do?

Petershagen: We do. Continue, please.

Trefzger: Well we just spent a few weeks in England. We landed in the middle of August in '44,so it was well after D day [June 6, 1944]. We landed on Utah Beach on D+94, andthen they sent our division down to Brittanywhere the Germans were penned up in theSaint Nazaire and Lorient submarine bases. So we were there all fall of '44, and wewere there when the Battle of the Bulgestarted, of course.

And then something happened thatchanged our fate, because a Germansubmarine torpedoed a troop ship comingacross the English Channel. It had a coupleof regiments of the 66th Division on it, andan awful lot of those fellows were killed inthis torpedoing. And so the 66th, in itsweakened condition, relieved us, and wewere sent to help General [George] Patton.


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We got into the German border area in earlyJanuary of '45, and proceeded to startattacking the fortifications along theGerman border, which was a veryfrustrating experience because they weremade out of concrete several feet thick, andthat's hard to tackle with a rifle. Soafter . . . It was a very cold winter and wehad a lot of casualties from frostbite as wellas from the normal warfare things. So Ithink our division ended up with over10,000 casualties altogether–about halfwere combat-related and half were frozenfeet, basically.

Petershagen: My!

Trefzger: And this was just a couple months ofaction, really. So we were involved incrossing the Saar River, our division was,and our regiment was with the 10thArmored Division, and the 10th ArmoredDivision went charging into the Germancity of Trier on the Moselle River. Sinceour regiment was attached to them we hadto come along behind them and pick up theGerman zoldottens [phonetic spelling] whowanted to surrender. And if they didn'twant to surrender, we had to persuade them. So this was in about early March. And acouple of weeks later, they had a big pushto the Rhine River, and then they pulled usback. We went up and held down the westside of the Rhine River while big pinchers


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were closing off and reducing the wholeRuhr area. So we stayed. Then we wentover in the Ruhr area to a place calledWuppertal, which is on the Lüder River,and we were there for several weeks. Wewere there when the war ended in May, andthen they sent us to Czechoslovakia. And Iguess John Turner was in Czechoslovakiatoo. I don't know if he told you about that. We must have been in the same area.

Anyway, we were along the Line ofDemarcation between the Russian-occupiedzone, which was about ninety percent of thecountry, and the American-occupied zone,which was kind of the southwestern tenpercent. So the highlight of the stay inCzechoslovakia was getting to march in aparade in Prague, because Prague was in theRussian-occupied zone, and the Czechpeople were very enthusiastic in theirgreetings of these American G.I.s marchingdown their thoroughfares. They sort of hadorganized cheering sections where they'dsay things like, "Hip, hip, hooray for USA!" And then other cheering sections would say,"Nazda, nazda, nazda," [phonetic spelling]which is a Czech word for "hello." Anyway, that was great.

Well then on Thanksgiving Day, mypoint number came up and I left the 94thDivision and went to another outfit that wascoming home, and we shipped out aboutDecember 20 and had a very rough three or


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four days where we made up to fifty miles aday on the ship. Finally the waves calmeddown and we pulled into New York harboron New Year's Eve.

Petershagen: Pretty joyous New Year's for you!

Trefzger: Oh, that was the greatest New Year's EveI've ever had, coming up New York Harbor. Anyway, so as soon as I got out of theArmy I went back to school.

Petershagen: Where was that then?

College Education

Trefzger: That was at Pasadena–still called JuniorCollege–it's City College now. Somebuddies of mine were taking geology classas an elective, and every spring break thegeology classes at P-J-C [Pasadena JuniorCollege] would go on field trip someplacefor the whole week. And this particularyear, which would be the spring of '46, theywere going to Yosemite. And so I said tomyself, "Gee, that sounds like fun." So Iasked these guys, "Well, I'm not takinggeology, but do you think I could goalong?" So they asked the teacher and theteacher said, "Oh, if you've got room inyour car, sure." So they had room, so Iwent. And this geology teacher wasincredible. He was so interesting the wayhe described the geology, and of course


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Yosemite is a particularly good place to talkabout geology anyway.

So by the time the week was up, Idecided I wanted to take geology the nextyear as an elective. I thought I wanted to bea chemist at that time. So I took a geologycourse, and as the year went on, I got lessand less interested in chemistry and moreand more interested in geology. So that'show I happened to end up majoring ingeology–because I'm sort of an outdoor nutto begin with. And geology is fascinatingto me at that time–still is. So I switchedmajors and spent another year at what wasnow Pasadena City College, and then Itransferred to Stanford in September of '48. Went there two years, including 1949summer geology classes, which were partlyin the Santa Ana Mountains, and partly inNevada. So I got my bachelor's degree inJune of 1950.

Petershagen: I see. Now, before you went in the Army, ifI followed this correctly, you had no greatlove for geology, you were nowhere near ageology major prior to that time?

Trefzger: No way, right. I hadn't be really exposed toany geology–that was the problem, I guess.

Petershagen: Do you remember the instructor's name atPasadena College that got you interested?


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Trefzger: Sure! His name was Van Emeredge[phonetic spelling], a Dutch name. And hewas a wizard, you know, the way he'ddescribe things and make it so that usneophytes could understand it. Soeverybody called him "Van," and I'm surehe influenced a lot of people the way he didme.

Petershagen: Alright. If we could return to the Army forjust one minute, what rank did you hold inthe Army?

Trefzger: Well, ah . . . Of course everybody starts outas a private–well maybe not everybody, butI did. And when we got overseas in Francethey promoted a lot of us to Private FirstClass. And then as we got into combat andpeople started dropping out because ofbeing killed or being injured or having theirfeet frozen off, the attrition was pretty bad. So I got promoted to Sergeant. I was anassistant squad leader in an infantryplatoon. As the attrition continued Ibecame a squad leader, so I ended up as aStaff Sergeant–not because of any talent,but because of desperation.

Petershagen: So you were an infantryman all the timeyou were in the Army?

Trefzger: That's right.


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Petershagen: You must have a combat infantry badgethen.


Petershagen: Okay, let's get you back out of the Armythen, and back into geology.

Trefzger: Yeah, right.

Petershagen: Then did you go to work for the Bureau ofReclamation straight from Stanford?

Pre-Reclamation Experience

Trefzger: Well, when I was a senior in my last quarterat Stanford, there'd been an awful lot of ex-G-Is had gotten their geology degrees theyear before, and there were a lot more likeme getting their degrees in 1950. And sothere really wasn't a big stampede to hiregeologists at that time. And a few peoplearound were interviewing, but not verymany. So I was toying with the idea ofdoing graduate studies in geology, and thendecided I didn't want to do that. And so myfirst job out of school after a couple ofmonths of various mountain trips was to goto work for a geophysical explorationcompany called United Geophysical, whichhad its headquarters in Pasadena. And sothey hired a bunch of guys fresh out ofschool with geology degrees, kind of astrainees. They'd have them work at


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different jobs on the geophysicalexploration crew.

So I worked as a driller's helper. Adriller crew drills the hole to put thedynamite in. And I worked as a shooter'shelper. He's the fellow that puts thedynamite in the hole and gets it wired up toshoot. And then let's see, I didn't work witha surveyor, but the surveyor lays out theshot lines. And I worked a lot as what theycall a "jug hustler," which are the fellowsthat move the geophones from set-up to set-up and hook them up onto the cable whichgoes to the recording truck. And then theyhad us working in the office some, plottingup the data and that sort of thing. So it wasvery good training.

Petershagen: About how long was that?

Going to Work For the Bureau of Reclamation

Trefzger: Well, just a few months. Then I'd beenworking long enough, and seeing the sort ofnomadic, gypsy-like life that these guyshad, just because of the nature of theirwork, so I had about decided I wasn't reallyplanning to make a career out of this, whenI got an offer from the Bureau in SantaBarbara to come to work for them doinggeology. So I jumped at the chance! Ididn't know anything about the project, Ididn't know anything about what they were


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doing there, but I went there and found outthat it was the Cachuma Project. And they1

had a project geologist and they hired me tobe his assistant. We had this six-and-a-half-mile-long tunnel going underneath theSanta Ynez Mountains. It's called theTecolote Tunnel. Should I spell it?

Petershagen: If you'd like.

Trefzger: Well it's T-E-C-O-L-O-T-E. It means"owl" in Spanish. Anyway, this projectgeologist, had done a lot of thepreconstruction geology work there. Youtry to go into each end of the tunnel eachday, and since it took about an hour-and-a-half or so to drive from one end of thetunnel, around and over San Marcos Pass tothe other end, it was getting to be, as thetunnel got further into the mountain fromeach portal, it got to be more and more of aburden on him–in fact, it got to beimpossible. So he was able to persuade hisboss that he needed an assistant, so I wasthat. So I got to go in one end of the tunnelevery day, and of course the dams werebeing built then–especially Cachuma Dam,

1 The Cachuma project provides supply water for thehistorically water deficient communities of the South Coast area,including the venerable, old Spanish mission city of Santa Barbara, itssmaller, urban neighbors, and 38,000 acres of outlying agriculturallands. The project stores floodwaters of the nearby Santa Ynez River. For more information see, Thomas A. Latousek, "Cachuma Project,"Denver: Bureau of Reclamation History Program, 1995,www.usbr.gov/projects/pdf.php?id=91.


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now called Bradbury Dam, and that wasinteresting. Had some interesting geologicproblems there that had not beenanticipated, and that always makes thingsmore interesting.

Tecolote Tunnel

Petershagen: Did you have a particular end of the tunnelthat was yours? Or did the two of you swapoff periodically?

Trefzger: No, we kind of would take turns going toeach end. I was familiar with each end. And the really climactic thing . . . See, Istarted to work for the Bureau on November6, 1950. And the really climactic thing, Ithink, happened, oh, gee, it was almost justabout two months when my boss, whosename was Harold, and I were in at the northheading of the tunnel where it was veryinteresting, because the rock was hardlyeven rock. It was like a loose, white sand. And although we didn't know it, there was alot of methane gas in it. And later thatsame night, there was an explosion thatinjured the crew that was in there. It burnedguys hands if they didn't have gloves on,burned their faces, it burned their chests ifthey had their shirt open. And fortunatelynobody was killed or anything, but thatreally scared Harold because he had a largefamily of cute little kids. And I think in afew months, he left. And I think this was


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one of the factors, the hazards of working inthis tunnel. So everything was going fineuntil then. After then, things got worse. (laughs)

Petershagen: Now, when he left, did you move up then totake his position as project geologist?

Trefzger: Yes, it was decided that since everythingwas going so well, that they didn't reallyneed to replace him, and that I could fumblealong and get the job done. And so within acouple of months of the time he left, thesouth heading hit a difficult area where abunch of ground-up rock, shale, camewashing into the tunnel with a large flow ofwater. And of course the specifications thatthe Bureau had issued were kind of specific,and it said that the Bureau will direct thecontractor on routing off excess waterflows. And so the contractor said to theBureau, "Okay, what do I do?" (laughter) The first thing he tried to do is, he said,"Well, I'm just going to go in and muck thisground-up shale out." It was hard littlefragments, but it was really crushed.

And so they hauled three or fourtrainloads of this stuff out. As fast as they'ddig it out, it would come back in, or keepcoming in, washing in. Of course nobodycould figure out why, until much later whenwe figured out what was going on. So theydecided jointly, I think, between thecontractor and the Bureau, that they should


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come back about fifty feet from where thishappened and over-excavate around thetunnel and build a big concrete bulkheadwith pipes going through it, and then they'dhook onto these pipes and they'd pumpgrout in.

Well, so what they did is, they filledthe tunnel with loose sand to keep fromhaving to fill it all with cement. Built thebulkhead, hooked onto the grout pipes,started pumping, and the bulkhead broke orslipped or something. Anyway, so theywent back eighty feet more. What's that,about a hundred and thirty feet from thetrouble area. And the rock was better backthere, and they built a better bulkhead. Andagain they filled the inner space with sand,and they pumped a lot of grout in. Theycarried the pipes back so they could pumpfrom down below the bulkhead, through thepipes, through the bulkhead and on up towhere the water was coming from. So theypumped and they pumped and they said,"Well, that's all it's going to take, so nowwe'll dig all this stuff out and go resumetunneling."

Well they got back up to where theoriginal problem had been, and the groutinghad cemented together a lot of these rockfragments, but it had not cemented them alltogether. So the same condition existed ofthe water flows and the ground-up rock


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coming in. So then the contractor got theidea, okay, the problem is two-fold: one isthe ground-up rock and one is the water. Well, if we can dig little drifts out to theside of the tunnel up ahead of the heading,we can pull the water away from it, andthen we can get through this ground-upstuff, by normal tunneling–driving spiles iswhat they call it, and breastboard andthings.

So that's what they did. They cameback, oh, maybe fifty feet from the face–orno, thirty feet back. And they went outforty-five degrees and then forward on bothsides, with little wood timbered drifts aboutthree-by-five, so you kind of had to hunchover to walk in the darn thing. And thenthey got up beyond where the bad place wasin the main tunnel, they turned them in andintercept[ed] the water, and that way theyfinally got through it. Well, they'd goneabout . . . oh, let's see, ("scats" whilethinking) almost forty feet, and it seemed tobe getting a little better down near the floor,but the contractor was getting verydiscouraged and so he wanted to stop untilthe Bureau could figure out what to do.

So they set up a drill in there anddrilled holes up ahead, and sure enough,there was good rock up ahead. And thethree-man consulting board said, "Well,you're doing just fine, just keep doing whatyou're doing. You got it made!" And so


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they did, and sure enough, they got to goodrock and then they had to decide, "Well,what shall we do now? We've still got allthis water coming in, even though we havea tunnel through it." So they decided,"Well, we're going to enlarge the tunnel andline it with concrete, this part of it." Andthe reason they're going to enlarge thetunnel is so the concrete can be two feetthick, and that way it will withstand thepressure of the water. "And we'll put adrain in the floor with a valve on thedownstream end. And if we get all thisconcreting done, keyed-in on both ends,then we can turn off the valve and the waterwill be contained."

So that's what they did, and it tookmonths and months and months. And camethe great day to turn off the valve, and itworked! The concrete lining had beengrouted-in on both ends, so they did a goodjob. And so I said, "Oh, okay, full speedahead." And so they resumed tunnelling. Well, they got the idea of grouting the flowsahead of excavation, which slowedeverything down a lot.

Am I giving you too much "gorydetails" with this stupid tunnel?

Petershagen: No, no! Proceed, proceed!


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Trefzger: I could talk three weeks about just thetunnel. Anyway, they were grouting ahead,they drilled holes about–a pattern of sixholes at the tunnel face, kind of radiatingoutward and forward–mostly forward–aboutthirty-five feet deep. If they hit more than afew gallons of water, they'd put the groutpipes in these holes, and they were caulked-in there with lead wool, because they werepumping at pretty high pressures. And thenthey'd hook onto the pipe one at a time andpump grout in. And that was helping. Itcut down the water flow a lot, but it wasvery slow and time-consuming. And allthis was on negotiated prices because therewasn't anything in the original tunnel spec[specification] for all this high-pressuredgrouting.

And as this painfully slowexcavation progressed, the temperature ofthe water gradually started inchingupward–that is, the natural water comingout of the rock. It was about eighty-sevendegrees, I guess, back where the concrete-lined section was. And by the time we'dgone another 2,000 feet, it had risen twentydegrees. It was up almost a hundreddegrees. So we went another thousand feetand the contractor–by this time it was abouta hundred and twelve degrees–and thecontractor tried to get the Bureau to go cost-plus because he said, "Good grief, youdidn't expect this, I didn't expect this, this isridiculous! And I'm going bankrupt if you


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just pay me unit prices for all this stuff." And the Bureau said, "Aw, we can't go cost-plus. We've got to get some moreconsultants in here to look at this." So theyhad another consulting board, and theseguys were even wilder than the first ones,because one of them wanted to drill aparallel tunnel underneath, to serve as adrainage tunnel, and we were in about threemiles from the portal. And so thatdidn't–nobody wanted to do that.

New Contractor for Telecote Tunnel

And finally the Bureau had anexperience with a tunnel contractor whowas a very dynamic guy. This was inAlaska on the Eklutna Tunnel. Thisfellow's name was Al Coker, C-O-K-E-R. And he was a good tunnel man, and he said,"Oh, come on, I'll finish your tunnel foryou. All you have to do is pay me ahundred and forty-four dollars a cubicyard," or whatever it was. Those aren't theright numbers. Anyway, for a price hewould take all the responsibility up to thepoint where the total flow coming out of thetunnel was 10,000 gallons a minute, or thetemperature got over a hundred and twentydegrees I think it was. Then if it got worsethan that, in either respect, he'd want to getmore money. So he came in, the Bureausaid, "Fine, we'll do it." So this changeorder–it was very expensive. Anyway, he


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ran big heavy-duty electric cables in therefor two miles to run pumps to get the waterinto pipes. And he bought a bunch of greatbig new compressors, so he pumped a lot ofcompressed air in there for cooling as wellas running the equipment. And his conceptwas to dry this tunnel without doing anypre-excavation grouting ahead. He said,"Aw, just go!"

So he started off and started going. Well, he hit about five hundred feet(chuckles) and then he hit a real big flow ofwater coming out of open fractures andjoints in the sandstone. All these flowswere coming out of open fractures andjoints in this hard sandstone. And this flowpeaked out at a total of 9,100 gallons aminute, as measured out the portal. So wewere still under 10,000. And the peaktemperature was a hundred and seventeendegrees Fahrenheit, which is pretty hot. Sothe Bureau lucked-out in that regard too, inthat we were just three degrees shy of hisbreak-over point.

Anyway, so he put more pumps in,more power, got it under control, continued,and pretty soon things started getting better. And the thing I didn't mention was . . . Oh,heavens, this is awful. The other end of thetunnel had been stopped when it was inabout three miles because the Bureau wasconcerned that the Santa Ynez River wouldfill Cachuma Reservoir and flood the portal.


21

So they stopped the contractor and had himline that end of the tunnel, three miles, withconcrete. So when Mr. Coker took over,let's see, there was about five thousand feetto go, 4,800 feet, from where the north endof the tunnel, all lined with concrete, ended,and where Mr. Coker was going to startworking on the south end. Okay, so by thetime he got about two thousand–no, lessthan that–about fifteen hundred feet, thingswere really good from there on. So it wasall really gravy in the sense that the waterflows almost stopped, and the temperaturedropped, and it was normal tunneling, andyet he was getting paid these inflated pricesthat he told the Bureau he would finish thetunnel for–which is great for him, but cost-plus would have been a much better way togo, looking at it with crystal-clearhindsight.

Petershagen: Yeah! Let me interrupt you right here,because we need to turn this tape over.

Trefzger: Yes, okay.

END SIDE A, TAPE 1BEGIN SIDE B, TAPE 1

Petershagen: This a continuation of the interview withBob Trefzger, tape 1, side B. Bob, wouldyou please continue with your descriptionof the building of the Tecolote Tunnel?


22

Trefzger: On January 15 of 1945 came the great2

holing-through where the two ends met, andstrange to say, they did meet, right there inthe middle of the mountain. So everybodywas overjoyed about that. And since Mr.Coker had done very well financially onthis job, he threw a very wonderful holing-through party for all of the Bureau peopleand all of his employees. We'll allremember that for a long time. It was inSanta Barbara at what was then called theMiramonte [phonetic spelling] Hotel. Well,let's see . . .

Petershagen: Now, this whole thing went on with youalmost by accident becoming the projectgeologist part-way through.

Project Geologist

Trefzger: Exactly.

Petershagen: By my calculation, maybe it's generous togive you two years of experience as a fieldgeologist by this time?

Trefzger: Oh, no, six months!

Petershagen: Six months?! (laughs) So I was more thangenerous!

2 Mr. Trefzger misstated the date of the hole-through, whichoccured on January 15, 1955.


23

Trefzger: Yeah! (laughs) It was on-the-job training. I had to learn fast!

Petershagen: And I guess the question is, where were youall this time? It seems to me that peoplewere probably looking for the Bureau'sgeologist just one minute after the otherwith new problems coming up.

Trefzger: Well, I was trying to cover all the otherthings on the project as well as the tunnel,which included Cachuma Dam, now calledBradbury, and a couple of smaller dams onthe Santa Barbara side of the mountains thatare called "balancing reservoirs." And so Iwas trying to keep abreast of them as wellas what was going on in the tunnel. Andthe contractor had his own geologicconsultants that he referred to. Of course,from time-to-time, geologists fromSacramento would come and visit. Andwhen we had consulting boards, thegeologists from Denver came out to makesure they were getting all the informationthat was possible to give them. That wasvery helpful, rubbing shoulders with thesemore experienced people.

Petershagen: At the time, was that the attitude you hadabout it that you were learning while youwere "rubbing shoulders with these moreexperience people"?

Trefzger: Oh yeah.


24

Petershagen: Or were you going off the job everyafternoon saying, "If one more thing goeswrong, I'm going to quit!"

Trefzger: Well, no, I was sort of fascinated by thewhole scenario, really. But I was kind ofdisappointed with the attitude of some ofthe Bureau engineers in Denver. When theycame out with the tunnel spec to begin with,they didn't put any geologic information inthere. They said that geology is what youcan see by going out and looking at the site. Of course my predecessor as projectgeologist had struggled and worked very,very hard mapping the surface geology inthe preceding years, before final design. And so I really thought the least they couldhave done was put his geologic map intothe specs, or at least made it available.

Petershagen: Was that pretty much standard Bureaupractice at that time, was to include thosethings in specs or to kind of ignore it?

Trefzger: Oh, I don't know. It became standardpractice, but I don't know what the practicewas beforehand. Actually, the bid that wasaccepted on the tunnel construction was thesecond time around for it, because the firstset of bids were rejected as being too high. And then they modified the spec in someway, which I'm not fully aware of–maybe toput more responsibility on the Bureau, anddid it again. And the low bidder, as ithappened, was not an experienced tunnel


25

company. It was some people whose claimto fame was building subdivisions up in thePacific Northwest. But their father knew atunnel expert who helped them with the bidand helped them during construction too.

Petershagen: Does that then pretty much close the tunnelstory?

Trefzger: Well, I think so. We could go on talkingabout details. (chuckles) Oh, one thing Imight add, that there was a hot springwithin a mile-and-a-quarter of the tunnelalignment that showed on almost everymap, including the Automobile Club ofSouthern California map, and it not onlywas a hot spring, but it was at an elevationconsiderably above the level of the tunnel. And so looking at that piece of hardevidence, it's not astounding that the tunnelhit some hot water. And the tunnel did drythe hot spring up.

Petershagen: So the hot spring is no longer there?

Trefzger: It's kaput! And the hot water is still comingin the tunnel.

Petershagen: Uh-huh! So from there where did you go?

Regional Geologist

Trefzger: Well, I was transferred to the RegionalOffice in Sacramento, because with the


26

completion of the tunnel, the project officewas kind of winding down and the regionalgeologist and his staff were concerned that Iwould get RIFed and be lost to posterity if3

they didn't transfer me. So I transferred toSacramento on July 1 of '55.

Petershagen: And what was your reaction to that at thetime?

Trefzger: Oh, I was looking forward to it, because Iknew they did a–from visits from differentpeople from the Regional Office, I thinkmaybe three different people had visitedme: the regional geologist, his assistant, andone of the staff, over the years. In fact,when I went on vacation, they sent a staffgeologist down to take my place, kind ofhold down the fort geologically on theproject. So I was able to have a nicevacation in the summer of '51 and '52, '53. In '54, I think I just took short breaks.

Petershagen: And were you married during these earlyyears with the Bureau of Reclamation?

Trefzger: Well, no, I was married to a nice lady I metin Santa Barbara just before I wastransferred to Sacramento. So we came upto Sacramento as newlyweds and settleddown up here.

3 Reduction in Force.


27

Petershagen: And where did you live when you were inSanta Barbara?

Trefzger: Oh, different parts of the city, really, inSanta Barbara, but usually up on the hill.

Petershagen: Back up into the Santa Ynez Mountains?

Trefzger: No, there's a hill immediately above SantaBarbara they call the Riviera.

Petershagen: Oh yeah.

Trefzger: Are you familiar with that?

Petershagen: Uh-huh.

Trefzger: Anyway, to start out with, I lived down onVictoria Street and then I met a chap andwe decided to have an apartment up on theRiviera. And then I moved back down tothe lower levels.

Petershagen: So it wasn't construction camp living? (chuckles)

Trefzger: Oh, no, no, no, it was nice.

Petershagen: What did your wife think of this idea ofmoving to Sacramento? Did she lookforward to it as much as you did?

Trefzger: Well she was interested. She was raised inVentura County, and went to nurses school


28

in Colorado and had a couple of nursingjobs in Santa Barbara when I met her. Soshe has an adventuresome spirit.

Petershagen: So she had seen a little bit of the world too.

Trefzger: Oh yeah, right.

Petershagen: Then you came to Sacramento as part of theregional geologist's staff?

Trefzger: Right.

Petershagen: What was your position title at that time?

Region<s Geology Branch

Trefzger: Well, I was just an engineering geologist. The workload of the Geology Branchseemed to be kind of split betweenengineering, geology, and groundwaterstudies. And there were a couple of otherpeople there already who did thegroundwater studies, and so I was put in thevery small engineering geology group. Andthe thing I did that first summer was Iworked on Monticello Dam. You know4

4 Monticello Dam is the primary feature of the Solano Project inNapa County California. Monticello Dam is located on Putah Creekwhere the stream crosses the eastern boundary of Napa County. Itregulates flows along the lower reaches of Putah Creek and storessurplus water. The dam is a concrete, medium-thick arch structure witha height of 304 feet above the foundation and a crest length of 1,023feet. For more information on the Solano Project, see Zachary

(continued...)


29

where Monticello Dam is? That's on PutahCreek west of Winters.

Petershagen: On Lake Berryessa.

Trefzger: Yeah, Lake Berryessa. It's a beautifulconcrete arch dam, a couple hundred feethigh. And the foundation excavation wasopened up that summer of '55. Right? Yeah. And so we were mapping inconsiderable detail, so we'd know what wasunder the dam in case of any futureproblems. So of course with the hotweather and not being accustomed to that,having been a Santa Barbarian for four-and-half-years, I'd get up very early in themorning and get my work done over atMonticello before it got too hot. Thatworked great.

Petershagen: And about how long were you there?

Trefzger: We would commute back and forth fromSacramento, throughout the summer,really–not every day. I got to do otherthings. I got to reconnoiter some dam sites,small dam sites up in the Sierra, so that wasinteresting, because I'd never been up therebefore. Just in the American River

4(...continued)Redmond, "Solano Project," Denver: Bureau of Reclamation HistoryProgram, 2000, www.usbr.gov/projects/pdf.php?id=195.


30

drainage. Some of these were subsequentlybuilt, but not by the Bureau.

Petershagen: Being pretty much and outdoors-orientedperson, you must have enjoyed that sort ofwork, I'm sure.

Trefzger: Oh, I loved it! Yeah, I loved it.

Petershagen: It's hard to imagine that it was work in yourcase. (laughs)

Trefzger: No, it was fun! It was a way of gettingfamiliar with the area, the American Riverdrainage area. All the roads in those dayswere dirt roads–they didn't have the nicepaved roads going around like they do now.

Petershagen: Who was the regional geologist at the time?

Trefzger: Well, the regional geologist was a fellow bythe name of Bill Gardner. And he had beenthe original regional geologist in the regionwhen they set up the regions, and he hadalso been the project geologist at ShastaDam, so he was very helpful.

Petershagen: And you were, in this particular branch youworked in, you were certainly dedicatedmore to the planning aspect of Reclamationactivities. Were you a part of a planninggroup, or were you an autonomous kind of agroup? Where would you fit on anorganization chart?


31

Trefzger: Well, we were a service agency, or servicebranch, I'd say. If a planning engineerwanted to know about the groundwaterresources of a proposed service area, hewould come talk to the groundwatergeologist. If he was developing waterstorage and/or diversion plans, even themost preliminary things based on quatchie-topo he would come and talk to the damdesigners and the geologists. And often theplanning engineer, the dam designer, and ageologist would go on field trips to look atthese possible dam sites that the plannerhad spotted just on the basis of the topo[topographical] maps. And so there was alot of this "team effort" sort ofthing–especially the three head of the props[pronounced with a long "o"–short forproposals?], the planner, designer, andgeologist.

Another thing I got to do even beforeI transferred, they asked for me to come upto Sacramento and help them out becausethey were short-handed in February of '55,and they drilled a deep test hole up nearChico for groundwater. So one of theSacramento geologists and I sat on thatthing for a week or so, working twelvehours a day, because the drillers weredrilling around the clock. So that wasinteresting. I'd never done anything likethat. I worked some at Monticello then,too, in that diversion tunnel, geology.


32

Trinity Division

So then the Trinity River Division5

was authorized, I believe, in 1955 and I gotsome work up there, but not very much. They hired another geologist to be theproject geologist up there full-time, so hetook care of most of the work.

Petershagen: So you were here in Sacramento, and reallyfree of any Trinity responsibilities?

Trefzger: Basically, that's right, yeah.

Petershagen: So the project geologist there on the Trinitywas the rough equivalent of the positionyou had down in Santa Barbara.


Petershagen: Tunnel project?

Trefzger: That's exactly right, except that the Trinitywork was just really getting started, the

5 The Trinity River Division on the Trinity River about 25 milesnorthwest of Redding is a trans-basin diversion feature of the CentralValley Project. Surplus water from the Trinity River Basin is stored,regulated, and diverted through a system of dams, reservoirs, tunnels,and powerplants into the Sacramento River for use in water-deficientareas of the Central Valley Basin. Water is used for irrigation, powergeneration, navigation flows, environmental and wildlife conservation,and municipal and industrial needs. For more information on theTrinity Division, see Eric A. Stene, "Trinity Division, Central ValleyProject," Denver: Bureau of Reclamation History Program, 1996.www.usbr.gov/projects/pdf.php?id=108.


33

preconstruction explorations, which took anawful lot of work before they could makethe final design. And then when the projectwas under construction at Trinity, theoriginal project geologist had left and sothey had to hire another one. And he hadfull responsibility and had quite a staff ofgeologists who keep on top of things,because it was a big project.

Petershagen: Well that's a much longer tunnel than theone you were associated with at downsouth.

Trefzger: Oh yes! Well, there's actually two of them: the big long Clear Creek Tunnel and theshorter Spring Creek thing which has a bigpipe in between two shorter tunnels, andWhiskeytown Dam and Lewiston Dam. 6 7

So there was a lot of complexities. So I hadvery little to do with Trinity, actually.

Petershagen: So what projects were you associated withduring that period of time? say '55 to '65.

6 Whiskeytown Dam is a feature of the Shasta/Trinity Divisionof the Central Valley Project. Constructed in 1963, the 282-foot highstructure is located is located in the Clear Creek drainage basin withinthe extreme southeastern foothills of the Klamath Mountains.7 Lewiston Dam, of the Shasta/Trinity Division, was built from1960-1963 about 7 miles downstream from Trinity Dam. The damcreates an afterbay to the Trinity Powerplant and diverts water bymeans of Clear Creek Tunnel to Whiskeytown Lake. It is an earthfillstructure 91 feet high and 754 feet long, forming a reservoir with acapacity of 14,660 acre feet.


34

Trefzger: Well, in about 1959, we lost a couple ofsupervisory geologists. One fellowtransferred and he went to Ethiopia on somekind of a project they had over there as aninvestigation. And then the other chapretired in 1959 and there was no formalizedfilling of his position. The organizationwas a little vague–"unstructured" I guesswould be the best way to put it.

Petershagen: When you say "the organization," what doyou mean? Just the Geology Branch?

Trefzger: Yeah. It was only later that it wasspecifically set up as sections with a sectionhead: an Engineer Geology Section Head,and then the Groundwater Section Head,and an Exploration Section Head.

San Luis Dam

So when this chap left in '59 I wassort of a supervisor, but it wasn't spelled outvery clearly. And when things really startedhumming again was when the San LuisUnit was authorized, because it was so big8

that they couldn't hire enough geologists onthe project down at Los Banos to do all the

8 The San Luis Unit is located in California<s Central Valley andis part of Reclamation<s Central Valley and the California State WaterProject. Authorized in 1960, the unit supplies irrigation water toroughly one million acres. For more information, see Robert Autobee,"San Luis Unit, West San Joaquin Division, Central Valley Project,"Denver: Bureau of Reclamation History Program,www.usbr.gov/projects/pdf.php?id=109.


35

preconstruction work. So it was sort ofsplit up: the Regional Office did most of thepreconstruction work on San Luis Dam andthe Forebay Dam; and the Project Officedid most of the work along the canal andthe pumping plants, although there wascross-fertilization between the two offices,and a lot of cooperation. So that was veryinteresting because the Bureau had its owndrill crews. And in order to get all thisdrilling done, especially at San Luis Dam,the drill crews were mushroomed withadditional employees. We had up to aboutseventy-five drillers altogether at the peakof that work.

Petershagen: Wow!

Trefzger: And then of course as the work trails off,you have to start RIFing people. And so thefellow who was assistant regional directorsaid, "This really isn't the best way to dothings, you know. We should have sort of abaseload drill crew and supplement withcontract drilling or supplement withtemporary employees so you don't have toRIF them, you can let them go with the dropof a hat." Well then before all this wasdone . . . Well, about the time the San Luiswork was done, Bill Gardner transferred tothe Denver Office. And this was inNovember of '63, and at hisrecommendation they made me actingregional geologist while they were going


36

through all the procedures of getting apermanent replacement. And by aboutFebruary of '64, they jumped through all thehoops they have to jump through, anddecided that I was it. So I was regionalgeologist from then on, officially. So bythat time we were more structured with thesections I mentioned, and so I was a sectionhead and I had to chose a replacement formyself. And when the groundwater sectionhead retired, of course, we advertised allover the Bureau for replacements and had tomake a selection. So that cut down a lot onmy field work! (laughter)

Petershagen: And the position of regional geologist is theposition you held when you retired, correct?

Trefzger: Right.

Petershagen: So how long are we talking about that youheld that position, altogether?

Trefzger: Well, from February of '64 to July of'88–long time.

Petershagen: And when you say that cut down on yourfield work, let me say that it was largely anoffice job, supervisory job, policy-makingjob?

Auburn Dam

Trefzger: Well, it's policy-making and coordinating,programming, trying to fight any fires that


37

come up, trying to balance the demandsversus the needs for things. Like when wegot going on the Auburn Dam Project9

–which I'll have to think about when thatwas–but anyway, there was a terrificdemand for drilling there, and we had tobalance their needs with the needs in therest of the region. And so they ended updoing some contract drilling up here, sincewe couldn't do all of their work forthem–just very intensive. The Auburn Damfoundation turned out to be much morecomplex than any of us supposed it wasgoing to. And of course at that time theywere talking about building a thin, double-curvature, concrete arch dam there, whereyou've got to know what's in the foundationin order to design the dam correctly.

Petershagen: I've heard that referred to as an "eggshell"kind of a structure.

Trefzger: Yeah, because it curves both ways, althoughit's not eggshell in the sense it's very thin.

9 The proposed Auburn Dam was located on the north fork ofthe American River upstream from Folsom Dam and Reservoir. Auburn Reservoir would control flows of the north and middle forks ofthe American River, while releases from the reservoir would operate theAuburn Powerplant and supply water to the Folsom South Canal. Formore information, see Jedidiah S. Rogers, "Auburn Dam, Auburn-Folsom Unit, American River Division, Central Valley Project,"Denver: Bureau of Reclamation History Program, 2009,www.usbr.gov/history/ProjectHistories/Central%20Valley%20Project-Auburn%20Dam%20D2.pdf.


38

But it's the shape. So this was fascinatingtoo, because at Monticello, which is aconcrete arch dam also, but it's not thin–it'sa massive arch dam. And the designtechniques between the time Monticellowas designed and the time Auburn wasdesigned advanced incredibly.

Petershagen: So what is it that makes Auburn socomplex, besides the kind of dam, or thedesign of the dam?

Trefzger: Well, there's a lot of faulting. There's a lotof old, ancient faulting that breaks the rockup into these discrete blocks. And if youdon't know about a particular fault in thearch dam foundation, which of course isapplying a great deal of stress to thefoundation rocks, it could cause realtrouble. The Mal Passe Dam in France isone that's always cited as an arch damwhere the foundation caused it to fail, withvery bad results. So an awful lot of workwas done on the Auburn Dam foundation.

Do you think we're jumping aheadtoo far?

Petershagen: No, no, that's fine. Maybe now is the timeto talk about things in detail.

Geology in Dam Design

Trefzger: Well there's a lot of things in San Luis[Dam] that are interesting, but at San Luis


39

it's a big, broad valley. Have you ever beendown there?

Petershagen: Yes, but of course only (laughing) since thedam was built!

Trefzger: You can see what the profile [is], though,from downstream. It's not in a canyon, it's abig, broad valley–the dam is three mileslong. And out in the center of this valley,the alluvial materials are a hundred andsixty feet deep. Not only are they a hundredand sixty feet deep, but there's some lake-deposited clays out there that are pretty softand compressible, and so the design wastricky in the sense that you had to make adesign that would allow for thecompression of the embankment on theselakebed clays. So the foundation trenchesgoing across the valley do not go all theway to bedrock. They go down about ahundred feet to the top of a basal claygravel alluvial sequence that's underneath.

Petershagen: So there's almost a cushion under the dam?

Trefzger: Yes, exactly. It's a cushion, and I thinkthat's why they designed, why there are twoparallel foundation trenches, each about ahundred feet deep, because of this soft claymaterial. So that was interesting. And thenthere were faults in the rock down there thatare interesting, and the main problem they


40

caused was in the outlet works,tunnels–there are four big tunnels.

Petershagen: Now, from the geologist's perspective, youknow where some faults are, because someare mapped for you already.

Trefzger: Right.

Petershagen: But then in the course of drilling and soforth, do you find more?

Trefzger: Yes, definitely.

Petershagen: And that's a frequent occurrence, I take it,from the way you answered that?

Trefzger: Yes. Almost without exception you findfaults where you don't think there are any. But you have to be careful that we don'tconfuse faults with something that's goingto cause an earthquake.

Petershagen: Oh, I understand! (laughs)

Trefzger: [inaudible], you know. Because all faultsare not seismogenic. And that's anotherproblem that we can get into. But at SanLuis, I'll have to give Bill Gardner a lot ofcredit. About the first thing he had donewas, he had about a thousand-foot-long[bull]dozer cut made up on the leftabutment where there was a convenientplace to do it, and where it exposed asequence of the rocks there. And it also, as


41

it turned out, uncovered one of the biggestfaults in the whole dam foundation, in thatinitial dozer cut. So we got our eye on itright from the start. And this wasimmediately north of where these four bigtunnels were going to go through theabutment from the pumping-generatingplant to the trashrack towers. And so itturned out there were four or five faults inthis tunnel area, especially on the upstreamend, that had to be considered whendesigning the tunnel portals and thetrashrack foundation.

Subsidence

So there were a lot of otherinteresting things at San Luis besides thedam: The subsidence problems on thecanal were something that had to be dealtwith. So they came to the geologists andsaid . . . Well, there are two kinds ofsubsidence in the first place: one is causedby pumping groundwater out from beneaththese very extensive clay layers that areformed by old lakes out under the valley. And it works like a huge hydraulic jackwhere you reduce the pressure below theclay and everything below it consolidates,


42

and so the ground surface goes down. Andthere are places near Mendota where theground surface has gone down over thirtyfeet, but it's all very gradual and veryregional in extent.

Then the other kind of what used tobe called "subsidence" is caused by thecollapse of some porous soils when they getsaturated with water. And this used to becalled shallow subsidence, and we sort ofdeveloped a better term, we think, called"hydrocompaction," which means the soilscompact when they get wet. And abouttwenty-five miles of the San Luis Canalcrossed these old mudflow deposits thatwere susceptible to hydrocompaction. Sothis all had to be defined, because it's veryexpensive to deal with in construction. Andso they were drilling a lot of holes downthere, some under contract, some with ourcrews, and ended up using a techniquewhere they built these big ponds as part ofthe spec and soaked these soils for monthsand months and months to get them allcollapsed and consolidated by saturatingthem.

And so there's one stretch about fivemiles, and the other stretch about twenty


43

miles, of the canal alignment that had to betreated this way. And these ponds werehundreds of feet wide, and of course fivemiles and twenty miles long, with dikes,and they had to pump the water up in therefrom Delta-Mendota Canal, because therewas no source up above. But that reallyseemed to work. Over the years since thecanal has been in operation, there have beenvery little problems in these areas that werepreconsolidated by soaking and saturation. So the engineers did a good job on that, andwe were just the "data gatherers," you mightsay, getting them the soil conditions and thedensities and the moistures. And theyfigured out where it needed it, and itworked great.

Petershagen: Okay!

Trefzger: So this was a big cooperative thing betweenthe people in the lab in Denver, the SoilsLab, the geologists in the field, the designpeople in the Canal Design Section–it was areal team effort.

Petershagen: An exemplary team effort?

Trefzger: Well, it worked! (chuckles)


44

Petershagen: Or was this the way business went on everyday?

Trefzger: Well, nobody agreed with everything thateverybody was doing, but the bottom lineis, How does the thing work when you buildit and operate it? And it's been workingfine.

Petershagen: Okay, this is probably a good place to stopand put a new tape in, I think.

Trefzger: Okay. This probably a good place to stopand put a new tape in.

END SIDE B, TAPE 1. BEGIN SIDE A, TAPE 2

Petershagen: This continues the interview of BobTrefzger on July the 12 , this tape 2, side A. th

Bob we finished, I think, San Luis on theprevious tape. Let me ask, though, aboutAuburn. In my view, most of the AuburnDam problems, I’ll say for lack of betterword, are really the political things thathave gone on around the Auburn Dam. Butevery once an a while I’ll hear somebodysay that some of your foundation workreally made that much more complex thanthe original design concept. That you


45

discovered much more faulting in the areathan what you expected. Is that correct?

Earthquake Problem at Auburn Dam

Trefzger: Yes, bit that’s not atypical. The faults, ofcourse, are the . . . where a rock has beenfaulted, broken then its more susceptible tobe weathered, more suseptible to havingsoil form on it, and therefore, its not alwaysvery obvious. So, I can think of only a veryfew dam foundations where we haven’tdiscovered faults that we didn’t knowwhere there. When their opened up for theeye to see. So, what we have to do in theexploration is temper the amount we mightlike to do to discover every last one withwhat is really necessary, in order toreasonable assure a safe design. Then whenthe foundation is finally opened up, ofcourse , you come down to the nitty-grittyand if there is something there that isdrastically different then you have to face itand evaluate it.

Peterhagen: I see.

Trefzger: Of course the big problem at Auburn wasthe earthquake question.


46

Peterhagen: So, there are faults, and there are faults.

Trefzger: Right. Exactly. Now until the earthquakeup near Oroville in 1975, almost nobodyhad thought much about the foothills beingpotentially active. And the consultants atthat time were doing studies for P-G-&E,because P-G-&E was interested in siting anuclear plant in the valley, east side of thevalley where there was water available. And there consultants were looking up anddown the eastern foothills, kind of getting afeeling for what the potential might be. There were these regional faults that hadbeen mapped a long time, since the 1950s,in the Sierra foothills and nobodyunderstood them, nobody considered themto be potentially active faults.

Then came along the Orovilleearthquake, and so the P-G-&E consultantsdid a lot of trenching up there and it showedthat there had been earlier earthquakes thathad broken the pretty young soil. And thenthey did some more work down near Sonorawhere there<s a lava flow that comes downfrom the Sierra that<s several million yearsold, called the Table Mountain Lava Flow. Interestingly, they actually had the P-G-&Esurveyors run levels down this lava flow to


47

see if there were any physical offsets. And,by gosh, it turned out there was. So thelava flow had been offset by faulting sinceit came down over the river valley. And sothe consultant naturally went on the northside of the lava flow down where there wassome soils and dug some trenched andfound some recent movement there. Youngmovement so they would classify that faultas a potential earthquake generator.

Petershagen: In geologist term, what do you mean byrecent movement or young movement?

Trefzger: Well, that<s hard. There are differentdefinitions of what<s an active fault. Andthe Bureau had one definition, and otherpeople have other ones. So, I really don<tknow what the current state-of-the-artdefinition is, if there is one. But at thattime, it seemed to me that Bureau said thatanything that has moved in the last 100,000years, we don<t want to put a dam on it, wewant to consider it to be active. At first, theBureau tried to kind of stonewall this issueof fault at Auburn and do we really have totake a look at it from seismic standpoint, ordo really have to hire somebody to this.


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Well, there were various geologicreasons advanced for saying that the faultsat Auburn are not related to the fault thatcaused the earthquake at Oroville. Butfinally, some representatives from a verylarge consulting company went to Denverand convinced them that they should behired to do this investigation that theBureau had not even decided to do. Or,maybe they were thinking of doing it inhouse. But these people convinced theBureau managers that they had the expertisethe Bureau needed, so the Bureau hiredthem. And after many, many months ofvery intensive studies over the whole area,not just a local study, they concluded, Ithink their famous phrase was, ?one cannotpreclude that some of these faults in thedam foundation would move hypotheticallyto an earthquake on a nearby more activefault.” ?One cannot preclude this” wasenough to, I think, destroy the concept ofputting up thin concrete arch dam anywherein the Auburn area, not just at the site.

The Bureau was really in a horriblespot then because it had already stated thefoundation excavation for the dam. And theconcept was to have two humongous bigcontracts; one was to excavate and treat the


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dam foundation all ready to build a dam,and the second contract was envisioned tobe, to come and build the dam per specs onthe prepared foundation. So, the firstcontract was well underway when theOroville earthquake hit, and the Bureau wasfaced with making a horrible decision: ?dowe pay through the nose by shutting thiscontract down while we investigate thisthing, or this idea of a potential hazard, or .. .[phone interruption]

We were talking about the thornydecision the Bureau had to make whethercontinue the excavation and foundationtreatment contract while the potentialearthquake investigation was going on, orwhether to suspend it pending the result. Well, the decision was made to continuewith the contract and the earthquakeinvestigation contract concurrently. And soabout the time the foundation excavationand foundation treatment was allcompleted, was about the same time, inround numbers, that the seismicinvestigation was completed. And I<vealready said that the results of that were onecannot preclude the movement on one of


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these faults, which would be very bad for athin concrete dam.

Petershagen: So that<s at least a partial explanation ofwhy we have an extensive dam foundationon the other side of Auburn from us and nomore work going on.

Trefzger: Right. Well, at about not too long after thatwhen Reagan became president, they kindof changed the ground rules about wherethe money was coming from for these largeexpensive projects. And that made thingseven worse.

Petershagen: And that rule change, I think, in effectmeant the Bureau had to go find a customer.

Trefzger: Yeah, I<m not sure about the details, butanyway the Bureau concept was we won<tbuild a large dam here, we have enoughconcrete out here we<ll build a gravity dam. A gravity dam, sort of like Shasta, would sitthere, faults or no faults, because its sittingthere by its shear weight and its not pushingupon the abutments except weigh-wise. But of course its going to cost a lot morebecause you have a heck of a lot moreconcrete to make and form and place. Andso the price kept going up and up and up.


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Anyway, I don<t think there<s anything moreto be said about Auburn.

Petershagen: Alright. Now that we<ve scared ourselveswith these faults and dam foundations andso forth, that makes an excellent lead in, Ithink, to talk about the Dam SafetyProgram.

Dam Safety Program

Trefzger: Right. Well the Dam Safety program got ahumongous kick when the Teton Dam up inIdaho washed out. It was a brand new10

dam that was supposed to have beendesigned and built to the state-of-art, and Idon<t know what happened exactly but itwashed out. It was a foundation problem. There were big open fissures in thesevolcanic rocks in the foundation and thefissures were not seal off the way they

10 Teton Dam was planned as the major feature of the TetonBasin Project in eastern Idaho. On June 5, 1976, shortly afterconstruction was completed, the dam suffered a catastrophic failure,causing over billion dollars worth of property damage and 11casualties. For more information, see Andrew H. Gahan and WilliamD. Rowley, The Bureau of Reclamation: From Developing toManaging Water, 1945-2000, Volume 2 (Denver: Bureau ofReclamation, United States Department of the Interior, 2012), 820-832.


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might have been. And there may be otherreasons it failed.

But anyway, this unfortunate eventgave the Congress some incentive to givethe Bureau money to really getting into thesafety of dams study. So, the problem fromthe geologist point of view is with a lot ofthese old dams there were absolutely nogeologic records made during theirconstruction. And so the only way we hadwas to go out to these dams and startdrilling holes through it. And sample boththe dam itself and its foundation. And sowe did a lot of studies.

In fact, one of the dams that got a lotof attention was San Luis Dam. And ofcourse there was a stimulus there in thesense that there was a large slide on theupstream side of the dam which was causedby a very simple thing. The hill on theupstream side on the left abutment slopedupstream, the hill under the dam, and thehill covered some very fat clayey soil. Andto put it simply, when theses flat clayeysoils have been soaked there for many yearsand have gotten softer and softer andweaker and weaker, the dam actually slid onthese saturated soft clay soils in an


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upstream direction that is part of dam. Andthe creep of the slide came up almost to thedam crest.

So there again, the geologist and thedrillers have to spring to it and find outwhat<s happening. So we were out there . . .we had to build a road out to the slide. Theupstream side of San Luis Dam is coveredby these big angular extremely hard basaltsolid blocks that was part of a big lava flow. So we had to build a road out there, drillthrough these rocks into the embankment,into the foundation sampling and testing,getting all the information. And finallybefore it was done, we had investigatedthree or four other places in the foundationwhere similar conditions had existedwithout a slide having occurred, but wherethere seemed to be some potential.

And they ended up doing remedial, Icall them buttresses, there justembankments that buttress the existingembankment. And their often called berms,but to me that<s not a berm, these are bigembankment buttresses that enhance thestability of the dam wherever their placedbecause there<s more weight to hold the


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thing in place. So they ended up buildingfour of these in different places; one wherethe slide was and three other ones. So thiswas very interesting.

Then we did work at the San LuisForebay Dam which has subsequently been. . . [phone interruption] Well, we right inthe middle of the Forebay Dam when Iretired, and as I understand it, since thattime there have been extensive repairs onthe buttress placed down there. Theproblem there was typical with a lot ofthese dams where you have saturated sandbed under the toe of the dam and theirconcerned about seismic liquefaction ofsand, if that happened during a bigearthquake the whole downstream side ofthe dam at least would slide on the liquefidematerial and it would be goodbye dam. Sothey had to excavate this saturated sand outof there and replace it with something morestable.

Petershagen: Are there other dams that saw this extensivekind of a retrofit?

Trefzger: No, those are the two main ones in theregion. And also at the time I retired, theywere looking at Cachuma Dam in relation


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to both its seismic stability and to raising it,and to increasing the flood handlingcapability. And I don<t know what hashappened in that study.

Spring Creek

Petershagen: Okay. One of the projects that I hadindicated to you that I thought wasespecially apropos to discuss with ageologist is the whole Spring Creeksituation in the up in the Trinity Divisionwith the Iron Mountain Mine and the runoffproblems. Just recently, the E-P-A, well ofcourse its been a superfund site for sometime, but the E-P-A is now proposing thatthe debris dam there should be raisedconsiderably. And of course the mineowner is fighting that recommendation orproposal. You said earlier that the regional,not the regional geologist, but the projectgeologist for the Trinity pretty much tookcare of that whole area and you were largelydivorced from it. But later on did any ofthis Spring Creek debris problem becomepart of your daily job?

Trefzger: Oh yes. The project geologist up there wasonly there during construction. So once the


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project went into operation, he was gone. His staff was gone and they finished theirreports, which described the geology ofeach of the structures during construction,including the long tunnel. So when the E-P-A Iron Mountain question came up, theE-P-A, as I recall, hired the Bureau to helpthem evaluate the problem. They hadalready hired a consultant and had reportsfrom the consultant there in Redding. Theyhad done a lot of work; taking samples fromof all the different creeks, running the labtest, and proposing different ways toimproving the situation. So . . .

Petershagen: And that was Clair Hill, or C-H-T.

Trefzger: Right. So when we got onboard the E-P-Awas kind of locked in to some of thesesolutions, or I should say these problemsolutions. They wanted to divert upperSpring Creek away from the debris dam sothat good water from upper Spring Creekwould get into Keswick Reservoir a11

11 Keswick Dam is a 157-foot-high concrete gravity dam, with acrest length of 1,046 feet, constructed 9 miles downstream from ShastaDam on the Sacramento River. Keswick Dam acts as an afterbay damcontrolling river fluctuations from the Shasta Powerplant. Waterreleased from Shasta Dam downstream to the Keswick Reservoir is

(continued...)


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different way. And they wanted to divertsome of the other creeks around placeswhere they were thought they were pickingup pollutants. And I don<t know how muchof that<s been done. Because if any of thatwas done, it was subsequent to myretirement. I did hear that instead of puttinga tunnel through the upper Spring Creekdiversion, they put an open cut, which wasfine and should be somewhat effective. Well at least it would decrease the amountof water going into the reservoir the SpringCreek Reservoir.

Of course, one of the problems isthat the rains fall on that mountain up thereand percolate down through the rock andthe water reacts with pyrite and formssulfuric acid, which dissolves the othercopper, zinc, cadmuim-bearing mineralsand then the water drains out the open minetunnels down below. Its called acid minedrainage, A-M-D. And this material is

11(...continued)stored for release through Keswick Dam and Powerplant. With steadyreleases from Keswick Dam, managers are able to regulate the flows ofthe Sacramento River downstream. Keswick Powerplant has threegenerators with a rated capacity of 105 megawatts.


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extremely toxic to fish; the fish are verysensitive to it. And so what has happenedin the past, is that there would be a big rainstorm and not just the A-M-D but all thepollutants that get eroded by the rain wouldwash down into Spring Creek Reservoir. And Sping Creek Reservoir would spill anddump this stuff into Keswick. And as Iunderstood it, the operators at Shasta Damwere unable to let out enough water todilute these toxic flows because of floodingdownstream. And therefore you ended upwith a big fish kill.

Petershagen: I think as I understand the problem; the realproblem is that everything is collectedbehind Keswick and . . .

Trefzger: Behind Keswick or Spring Creek?

Petershagen: Well, I think from Spring Creek it flowsinto Keswick Reservoir. Does it not? AndI think its that collection right there thatthey<ve really been unable to deal with.

Trefzger: Yeah, well I<m not sure. Anyway, it was abig mess. When the regional office did theinvestigation for Spring Creek Dam when itwas constructed and that whole SpringCreek arm of Keswick Reservoir was full of


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sediments that had eroded from the minedump. And in fact a lot of those sedimentsare what ended up in the dam. Because thepowerplant, in order for it to function, intoKeswick Reservoir had to have an open armof the reservoir that couldn<t be clogged upwith sediments or the powerplant wouldn<twork. So the Bureau was faced with aproblem, ?How do we keep these sedimentsout of the Spring Creek arm of thereservoir?” Answer was, ?Well we couldbuild a dam up here and catch thesediments.” And thereby reasonably assurethat the tail race arm of the reservoirwouldn<t get plugged up.

So the Bureau investigated anddesigned and built the debris dam as it nowsits there. And it was called a debris dam, itwasn<t . . . any thought of controllingpollution was at least secondary, if not lessthan secondary. So the debris dam wasbuilt, it caught the debris. It kept the tailrace open. And as long as it didn<t spill, itgave a method of releasing the A-M-D andwhatever other God-awful things werepooled there gradually into KeswickReservoir. So the justification for makingthe dam bigger, of course so it could hold


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more water, so there are fewer times whenyou lose control and have it go unimpededover the spillway. That<s part of myunderstanding.

Petershagen: Part of the debate now is whether the debrisshould withstand the one hundred yearstorm, or a three hundred year storm, andon and on and on.

Trefzger: Yeah that was the question. Well, howhigh is high enough. The consequences ofthe thing washing out are pretty ghastly.

Petershagen: Right. At some point it becomes a Keswickconcern. Now Bob, in thinking about theSpring Creek situation and Keswick and allthat, this certainly doesn<t come about as theresult of a deliberate act of anybody in theBureau of Reclamation to kill fish, and itcertainly doesn<t come about as a result ofnegligence. The thing was built I think itcould be said state-of-the-art, or the level ofknowledge of the day, but I think we stillhave to face the fact that Reclamation doeseffect the environment, and I guess take ourlumps for what may have been done in thepast. Are there other areas that you know ofwhere maybe the Bureau wasn<t quite asconcerned for environmental considerations


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as perhaps they could have been, or inhindsight I should say, should have been?

Kesterson Reservoir

Trefzger: Well, I would like to talk about KestersonReservoir. The Bureau sort of had a tiger12

by the tail with this whole question ofdrainage from the San Joaquin Valley. Andwith fact, I believe, that the San Luisauthorization act did provide for a drainbeing constructed without specifying anydetails whatsoever. So the poor planningengineers were stuck with trying to figureout some reasonable ways of handling thedrainage from the huge acreages that werebeing irrigated and leached the salt.

12 "Completed in 1971 by the Bureau of Reclamation, Kestersonincluded 12 evaporation ponds for irrigation drainage water. Thereservoir, a part of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge, was animportant stopping point for waterfowl. In the 1960s officials proposeda 290-mile drainage canal to the ocean known as the San Luis Drain. Only 85 miles were completed, however, and work on the drain haltedin 1986 after scientists discovered bird deformities due to drainage atKesterson." For more information, see Water Education Foundation,“Kesterson Reservoir," www.watereducation.org/aquapedia/kesterson-reservoir. (Accessed 5/2016).


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And so one of there ideas was tohave a storage facility and they werethinking of one at a place called Dos Palos,which is sort of southeast of Los Banos. And they were also looking at thisKesterson site which is kind of northeast ofLos Banos. And the geologists and thedesigners were working on both of themtrying to see which was the better, if onewas better than the other. And the idea ofhaving a reservoir was to store the pollutedwater until such time in the future when wehad such flood flows in the delta and thepolluted water could then be dribbled intothe flood flows and passed out to the oceanwithout causing any great increase inconcentrations of any bad elements.

Well, it was finally decided thatKesterson was the better choice. We, ingeology, were always concerned about thereservoir being made watertight so itwouldn<t leak, because we were veryconcerned about the potential effect ofpesticides, of fertilizers, of all the stuff usedin agricultural production that wouldinevitably make its way into this water. Wecertainly did not know about selenium. Wedidn<t dream that there was an element inthe soil that would cause problems, but we


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did think about other things that wouldcause problem.

And therefore when it was decided tomake a wildlife refuge out of this reservoir,what we knew would be absolutely lousywater we thought from pesticides andeverything, we were astounded. Wecouldn<t believe that anybody would doanything so stupid, as to make a wildliferefuge out of these ponds just because theyhad water in them. We knew the water wasgoing to be bad. And let me emphasize thatwe did not know about selenium or that itwould be the selenium that would be theculprit that made it bad. We fully expectedit to be bad. So I think the Bureau hastaken a bum rap on that because it wasn<ttheir idea to make the thing a wildliferefuge. It was Fish and Wildlife guys. Whythey couldn<t realize the water wasn<t goingto be good water is beyond me. Anyway, Ithink that<s all I care to say about Kesterson.

Petershagen: Any other environmental problems that youwould like to address?

Trefzger: I don<t think so. I think the Bureau, in myexperience, has always responded to


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somebody<s needs. Like the San FelipeDivision is another good example whereyou have another water deficient part of thestate that just wasn<t able to get enoughwater to get by. So the Bureau devised ascheme to supplement their water supplyand bail them out of a bad situation.

Petershagen: How, as a bureau employee, perhaps youcould speak for other Bureau employees atthe same time too, when you see the Bureaugetting a bum rap, like over at Kesterson,how does that make you feel? Does thathave a big morale impact?

Trefzger: Well in view of these concerns we<ve hadbefore about the nature of the water thatwas going into the reservoir and havesomeone decide, ?My gosh, let<s make this awildlife refuge and make it attractive forbirds,” that really made us pretty unhappybecause it was so irrational. And the factthat the Bureau got the blame for it made useven more unhappy. Because nobody saidit wasn<t the Bureau<s idea that these pondswere not supposed to be anything butstorage ponds for lousy water. So,[inaudible]


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Petershagen: I think besides hearing it, I see someresentment on your face as you talk about it.

Trefzger: Well, yeah its frustrating. I mean, youknow . . .

END SIDE A, TAPE 2BEGIN SIDE A, TAPE 2.

Petershagen: This continues the interview with BobTrefzger, this tape 2, side B, on July the12 , 1994. Bob, in your day-to-day work atth

the Bureau, you must have interfaced withcountless other agencies: the StateDepartment of Water Resources, the Corpsof Engineers, probably dozens of agencies Icould name if I had to, and dozens more Icouldn't even begin to [name]. How did theBureau get along with other agencies, inyour view?

Reclamation<s Relationships with Other Agencies

Trefzger: Well, in my situation, I was usuallyworking with geologists for the state or theCorps, and we got along fine. On the SanLuis Safety of Dams Study, of course, thestate paid fifty-five percent of all the costsfor San Luis Dam, you know. And so they


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were very much interested in everythingthat was going on in the repairs, but it was avery . . . It was handled very well. TheBureau engineers from our Denver Officewere doing the analytical work to evaluate,to test the samples we got, and then to usethe test results in these sophisticatedevaluations of the stability under seismicloading. And I think they were very highly-respected by the state engineers who didsimilar things for state dams, as being very,very talented, competent people. And therewas an absolute minimum of any friction orhardship, and we had many meetings downat the San Luis Dam Field Office about thiswork as it was going on, so I was involved,you know, in all of these.

Petershagen: In any of this work, were you ever calledupon to address public meetings or speak tointerested groups?

Trefzger: Mmm (thinking). Not that I can recall. I'vegiven talks to local geology groups on theTecolote Tunnel project, which was a longtime ago I did that.

Petershagen: To professional groups and hobbyists both,I assume?


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Trefzger: It was an engineering-geology group theyhad.

Petershagen: I see. How about relationships with Denveramongst geologists?

Region<s Relationship with Denver Office

Trefzger: Well, by and large I'd say they were prettygood. There were some characters that Iwould just as soon have not had to dealwith, but they had their responsibilities andwe had ours, and sometimes we didn't seeeye-to-eye about certain things. We wantedto . . . Oh, as an example, we wanted to putsome information in some of our geologiclogs up at the Stampede Power Plant , and13

they said, "Well, if you put that in there,

13 A feature of the Washoe Project, the Stampede Powerplant is arun-of-the-river plant. The power generated is dedicated first tomeeting the requirements of the project facilities. The remainingenergy is marketed to various preference customers in northernCalifornia. The dam is a zoned earthfill structure with a height of 239feet, a crest length of 1,511 feet, and an embankment volume of 4.5million cubic yards. The dam is 40 feet wide at the crest. Thereservoir, with a capacity of 226,500 acre-feet, provides flood control,recreation, a new reservoir fishery, and other fishery improvements onthe main Truckee River, Little Truckee River, and Boca Reservoir. Thepowerplant was placed on-line in 1988.


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these logs won't conform to our standards,because there's too much information. Andtherefore, you'll either delete thisinformation from your geologic logs, or youwill delay the issuance of the specifications,which your regional director will get verymad about." And there was completefrustration on our part, because we weretrying to supply what we thought wasadequate information without beingoverdoing it. But they hadn't changed theirstandards. Since that time, they've updatedtheir standards and our logs would havebeen fine, but we were "ahead of the game,"so to speak.

Petershagen: Did you ever have the sense that maybeDenver was kind of a "big brother" lookingover your shoulder?

Trefzger: Mmm (thinking). Well, I think there weresome people in Denver who were sort ofover-awed with their own brilliance.

Petershagen: (chuckles) That's an interesting way todescribe them! (chuckles)

Trefzger: But I didn't get the "big brother" feeling, it'smore, you know, this being over-awed with


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one's brilliance ends up causing a sort of apomposity that is almost indescribable.

Petershagen: How about, oh, various publicorganizations? I'll toss out the [name]Sierra Club as one, or Chambers ofCommerce. Anybody like that everapproach the regional geologist, and didyou have to deal with any of those sorts ofgroups?

Trefzger: No, I don't think so.

Petershagen: So you really weren't out there in theforefront, representing the Bureau to thepublic, I guess.

Trefzger: Oh no, we were kind of behind the scenes. Our main function was to work withprimarily design engineers, to get them thegeologic and soils information and samplesthat they needed, to discuss with them thesignificance of these things, and to helpassure that they didn't misunderstandsomething or misinterpret something, sothat we're all looking at the physicalparameters the same way. And the wholepoint, of course, is to end up with a design


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that's as economical as possible, and yet assafe as possible.

Petershagen: In your climb up the ladder from the 50s oninto the 60s and into the 70s, as you beganto take on a supervisory role, did you feelthe Bureau had adequately prepared you forthat? Did you receive any training in thesupervision of people?

Supervisory Training

Trefzger: Oh, I think I could have received more thanI did. They had an organizationaldevelopment training that was helpful, butit was not about how to function as asupervisor. I should have been given morethan I was. I wasn't given very much at all. I think they regarded . . . Well, it workedboth ways: some of my supervisors wouldcriticize me for being too technically-oriented and not spending enough timemanaging, and yet I was givenno . . . training in management per se, orsupervision per se. So I kind of resentedthat, you know.

One time my supervisor was aneconomist, if you can believe that. Thiswas because we used to be in the Planning


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Division, in which one of the assistantplanning engineers turned out to be aneconomist. I mean, he was a former Chiefof the Economics Branch, and he was incharge of the various service branches inthe division, [like] economics andhydrology, and water rights and geology. And the other assistant worked with theplanning engineers directly, so it was kindof this division. That was not one of myhappier times. (chuckles)

Petershagen: (chuckles) I see. I take it that overall youthink the Bureau of Reclamation was apretty good outfit to work for?

Reflections on Reclamation

Trefzger: Well, I enjoyed it a lot, and although I didn'talways agree with some of the politicalthings, I really thought that most of thepeople in the Bureau are really devoted andcommitted to providing the public a service,and to filling a stated need, not somehypothetical pie-in-the-sky need. And withthat end in mind, they were extremelyexpert at doing their job, at filling theseneeds. So I have nothing but good feelings


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for having spent my career working,contributing what I could.

Petershagen: So your perception of yourself is that you'reanother one of these people that wasoriented towards fulfilling this need?

Trefzger: Right, but as part of a team. It's amultifaceted team with all kinds ofspecialties. And of course there are a lot ofplanning engineers and there are a lot ofdesign engineers, but then there are all theseother specialties that have their part to play.

Petershagen: Did you notice, over your career, was thereany point in time you might identify thatyou thought maybe that the collectiveattitude started to change?

Trefzger: The attitude of the employees? Oh, I don'tthink so.

Petershagen: Or the attitude of the Bureau, it's corporateattitude.

Trefzger: I don't think so. You know, it sort of grewwith the times, I think. It certainly didn'tstay the same over all those years. Youknow, the times changed drastically fromthe 50s and 60s when the Bureau was


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building projects like mad and things havereally tapered off in the past twenty years orso.

Petershagen: When you went to work for the Bureau ofReclamation, all of the engineers, all of theprofessional people, I'm sure, were male. And if the Bureau had female employees,they were office workers, clerks andsecretaries.

Trefzger: Right.

Petershagen: As women started to come in and fillprofessional roles, did that come as a shockto your system?

Trefzger: Oh, no!

Petershagen: Or was that just another part of life?

Trefzger: We kind of got a jump-start by having alady geologist on board as early as about. . . oh, in the late 1950s.

Petershagen: That would have been fairly unusual, Ithink.


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Trefzger: Yes. She had graduated from theUniversity of California and had workedsome for the Department of WaterResources and some for the State Divisionof Oil and Gas, and she came to work for usfor a few years and she did pretty well. And, you know, we were flexible. You gotto be flexible to be a geologist! And lateron we had other lady geologists come onboard too, but the first one was a long timeago.

Petershagen: Interesting. Most of your professionalassociates at the Bureau are local people?University of California? Stanford?

Trefzger: Oh, no, the engineers came from allover–well, and the geologists did too, thatwe hired over the years. Had fellows fromDartmouth and fellows from Arizona,fellows from Colorado.

Petershagen: Did we experience, oh, say, football season,all the little Stanford-U-C rivalry in theoffice or any of that kind of stuff go on?

Trefzger: Oh, of course! Of course, you got to haveall this attitude going on. Got to have acheer for the old alma mater. But nobodytook it very seriously.


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Petershagen: Okay. I think I've reached the end of myagenda. Is there anything that you'd like toaddress?

Trefzger: Well, maybe you could help me think ofsomething.

Petershagen: It looks like I'm drawing a blank.

Trefzger: Yeah, I think you are–Mr. Blank.

Petershagen: Well, I think we've covered a lot of groundin this interview, and I want to thank you alot for your time and for undertaking thisendeavor. Before we close, I do need tohave you repeat the acknowledgement thatyou understand that this interview doesbecome the property of the United States.

Trefzger: I understand.

Petershagen: Alright, and with that I'll say thank you verymuch, and that concludes this interview.

Trefzger: Fine.

END SIDE B, TAPE 2END OF INTERVIEW


robert trefzger - usbr.gov

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