McLean, Walter Reginald, 1903-

Biographical Information

Walter Reginald McLean, the son of Walter Reginald and Sarah Jane (Patterson) McLean, was born on July 16, 1903 in the town of Broderick in Yolo County, California. His distinguished career embraces fifty-three years of service to the East Bay Municipal Utility District, plus fifteen years as a consultant to water-related projects in the United States, South America, and South Africa.

McLean's forty-one years on the engineering staff of EBMUD spanned the period 1927-1968, during which most of the foundation facilities of the water district were created. In the 1920s he worked on the construction of Pardee Dam and the First Mokelumne Aqueduct. In the 1930s and 1940s, he supervised district projects in the East Bay, including construction of the Orinda Filter Plant and a network of pipelines for water distribution. From 1945-1952 he was in charge of investigations and construction of the sewage collection and treatment facilities that ended the routine discharge of the area's raw sewage into San Francisco Bay.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, McLean participated in planning and building water facilities to accommodate projected population increases in the East Bay. As manager of the Special Projects Construction Division during these years, he oversaw construction of Camanche Dam, the Third Mokelumne Aqueduct, Briones Dam, the Lafayette Tunnel and Aqueduct and the Walnut Creek Tunnel.

McLean faced mandatory retirement at age sixty-five from EBMUD in 1968. However, after completing his EBMUD employee status, McLean was neither retired nor tired. So, in 1969, he embarked on another career - this time in the private sector. He joined the civil engineering consulting firm Goslinger/McLean Associates, Inc., under the presidency of his son, Robert J. McLean. He also served as an expert witness in lawsuits and advised on a variety of construction projects, from the BART tunnel in San Francisco to a shrimp farm in Honduras to a pipeline in Ghana.

He returned to EBMUD in the capacity of a public servant in 1979 after his election to the water district's Board of Directors. He was re-elected by the people twice and served on the board until 1991.

Excerpted from: Walter R. McLean, From Pardee to Buckhorn: Water Resources Engineering and Water Policy in the East Bay Municipal Utility District, 1927-1991, an oral history conducted in 1991 by Ann Lage, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, 1993.