California dam has ties to late Cape construction executive

The nation's tallest dam has ties to a now-deceased prominent businessman who hails from Cape Girardeau.

Completed in 1968, the Oroville Dam in Oroville, California, was built by a multicompany venture assembled by the late Irvin Garms of Potashnick Construction Inc., according to son Ron Garms of Cape Girardeau.

Heavy rains resulted in water recently being diverted into an emergency spillway for the first time in the nearly 50 years since the Oroville Dam was built.

Officials began using the emergency spillway after a hole developed in the main spillway, threatening to unleash a 30-foot wall of water.

Nearly 200,000 people downstream were ordered to leave their homes as a precaution. The evacuation order was lifted Tuesday after state water officials said they drained enough of the water behind the dam so its earthen emergency spillway will not be needed to handle runoff from an approaching storm, according to The Associated Press.

Irvin Garms, who died in 2011 at the age of 96, was one of "three decision-makers" on the massive dam project, according to his son.

"It was the largest bid project ever awarded at the time," Ron Garms wrote in an email to the Southeast Missourian. "It is an incredible structure, seven times wider than Hoover Dam and 40 feet taller."

Ron Garms said Oroville Dam is California's "largest reservoir."

He recalled visiting the site when the dam was being built.

"It is just an incredibly massive structure," he said.

The dam was built with the help of a "special railroad hauling system," Ron Garms said in the email.

The system was mentioned in the obituary of Irvin Garms, which was published in the Southeast Missourian.

"The 90 million cubic yards of fill material was hauled to the California site in railroad cars and unloaded by flipping them upside down using a system conceived by Garms," according to the obituary.

"If all of the railroad cars of fill material flipped in the six years of the project were lined up end to end, they would form a train 18,000 miles long," the obituary stated.

Garms resigned as president of Potashnick Construction in 1985 at the age of 70 and sold his interest in the firm.

"He continued to study and work steadily, mostly on seaport and shipping ventures in the Middle East and Far East as well as major U.S. harbors and inland waterways for at least 15 more years," his obituary stated.

Locally, Garms is most known for his involvement with the SEMO Port Authority.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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