The photo of the dump truck dumping its load into the dragline bucket shows how big this thing was.

A set of aerial cables was suspended above the river and the rapids by huge towers. Rock and other large aggregate dumped into the dragline was hoisted over the river on the cable system and dumped into the river to slowly shut off the flow to the rapids.

This was a very slow process that became more & more difficult as the gap in the dam closed and the water increased its speed accordingly.
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