The Hood River News, Hood River, OR., July 3, 1912, page 2
WHITE SALMON IS TO BE DIVERTED
City Engineer P.M. Morse inspected the work being done
on the big dam across the river last of the week. The first of three tunnels
in the rock sides of the White Salmon river canyon, through which the flow
of the stream is to be diverted from its regular bed while the big dam of
the Northwestern Electric Company is building, was completed last week. This
tunnel is between 100 and 125 feet long, is 15 feet wide and eight feet high.
Except for a few days in the recent Industrial Workers'
strike at the dam, which took 235 men off the job temporarily, work has been
carried on in this tunnel for a month, day and night. With its completion,
double shifts are now driving the two other tunnels. One of these, upstream
from the one just finished, will be 170 feet long, and the other, downstream,
will be about 700 feet long.
The tunnel gangs make about four feet a day through the
rock, with drillers working from both ends. Some of the most expert hard-rock
men in the Northwest are engaged in this tunnel work.
After the three tunnels have been completed, which probably
will be within ten days, a wood flume 12 feet wide and six feet high will
be built through them from the cofferdam upstream by which the river is to
be forced out of its regular channel, to the lower end of this water "portage."
The flume is necessary, for if the current were permitted to flow against
the rough sides of the tunnel the jagged rock projections would act as so
many obstructions and check the speed of its flow.
As the White Salmon itself is much wider than the tunnel,
in order to get the same volume of water through the narrow flume as flows
in the river, high speed is necessary. The engineers of the Northwestern
Electric Company expect to force the stream through the tunnels at the rate
of 20 feet a second, nearly twice as fast as its regular flow.
After the tunnels and flumes are completed, work will
be started immediately on the huge concrete dam itself.
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© Jeffrey L. Elmer