was signed, Beardsley died. His son, Robert took direction of the project along with Pleasant. In early 1926, Pleasant eventually sold the needed bonds to the New York firm Brandon, Gordon and Waddell. The firm sent Donald Ware Waddell to oversee construction. Although the initial implementation of worker camps and site preparation had begun in 1925, the main effort of construction began in 1926 with the diversion of the Agua Fria River. In that same year, the dam was renamed to Pleasant Dam. By February 1927, concrete pouring for the 20 buttresses was nearing completion. The dam was complete in October 1927. Its construction employed a maximum of 600 workers and cost over $3.3 million. Prior to its inauguration, cracks were discovered in the dam's buttresses. This led to much controversy over the new design of the dam and whether it was safe in the long-term which delayed its inauguration until February 1928. The situation was exacerbated on 12 March 1928 after the St. Francis Dam in California had a catastrophic failure. In 1929, after a series of hearings and debates, which eventually reached the state legislature, the State Water Commissioner ordered the spillway for the dam to be lowered to prevent excess water levels and stress on the dam. It was also required that specific water levels in the reservoir be maintained. The dam was rehabilitated until 1935, and a steel roadbed was installed atop it that same year. In the early 1960s, it was renamed the Waddell Dam. New Waddell Dam In 1973, construction on the Central Arizona Project (CAP) began while many of its facilities were still being planned and approved. One integral part of the project was a storage dam on the Salt River, Orme Dam. However, in 1977, US President Jimmy Carter recommended that Orme Dam and two other projects on the Gila River System be removed from the CAP plan because of their negative impacts and cost. While the two other projects (Hooker and Charleston Dam) were easily removed, Orme was not. Orme's removal was hampered by controversy that led to the creation of the Central Arizona Water Control Study (CAWCS) in 1979 after Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus requested that the Bureau of Reclamation identify a replacement. In 1980, the CAWCS recommended the removal of any storage units on the Gila River. Recent flooding within the CAWCS area and the Orme