GEOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Completed in 1936, Hoover Dam was built to provide irrigation water and hydroelectric power, and to control seasonal flooding of the Colorado River, which made downstream settlement possible.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928 authorized construction of a dam in Boulder, or Black, Canyon, construction of the All-American Canal to connect the Imperial and Coachella Valleys with the Colorado River, and divided the lower basin waters among the lower basin states.

Detailed explanation-3: -The US Bureau of Reclamation devised the dam. The Bureau of Reclamation created plans for the dam’s construction to make it one of the largest and most complex structures of its time upon completion.

Detailed explanation-4: -The Reclamation Service-now known as the Bureau of Reclamation built the Laguna Dam at a cost of $2 million. In January 2018, workers at the Laguna Dam were repairing the original concrete from over a hundred years ago. Doug Cox at the Imperial Irrigation District manages the dam.

Detailed explanation-5: -Hoover Dam, which formed Lake Mead, is located in Black Canyon approximately 30 miles east of Las Vegas, NV in the Mojave Desert, Arizona-Nevada (Figure 1). At full pool, Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States by volume and is second only to Lake Powell in surface area (Paulson and Baker 1983).