Lieutenant Colonel Shunk was a creative and careful engineer and a politically astute negotiator, but also a modest man. He used quiet diplomacy and public hearings to settle many disputes over water use. His key project was the redesign of lock and dam 1, incorporating a higher, hollow Ambursen dam with power generation. Marshaling cooperation between Minneapolis and St. Paul on this dam and other projects was quite a feat, but even greater was his success in getting Corps approval to abandon the brand-new, but unnecessary, Twin City lock and dam 2.