Big Dam Backlash Rising in the Sun Belt - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 82

fectively” with all water consumers. The often forgotten 1950s Georgia drought occurred
at a critical juncture during the so-called Cotton Belt's transformation into the Sun Belt and
was partly the result of “slow, but steady, social and economic changes.” 6 These changes
amplified long-standing environmental realities in a region defined by water and power.
The 1950s southern drought and response ignited an intense backlash over how best to bal-
ance water and energy supplies as the New Deal big dam and liberal consensus began to
unravel. The rising Sun Belt rediscovered an old vulnerability in a period of increasing
change: Sustainable growth required a sustainable water supply.
Opposition to the New Deal big dam consensus coalesced nationwide as the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers' plan for the Hartwell Dam energy and water project surfaced in the
Savannah River valley. Controversies over dams in the American West sparked resistance
across the country. For example, the postwar public-private power debate over the Hells
Canyon High Dam served as a critical tipping point for New Deal liberalism and post-1945
conservatism and environmentalism. The Idaho Power Company's legal team successfully
mounted a decade-long campaign to win control of the Snake River valley, “unplugging
the New Deal” in the process, according to one scholar. The utility lobby trumpeted the
economic value of free enterprise, won Republican president Dwight Eisenhower's polit-
ical support, and secured federal approval for three small corporate hydroelectric dams in
1957. These victories eliminated the Corps' and the Bureau of Reclamation's Hells Canyon
High Dam project while simultaneously beating back plans set forth by New Deal-era
agencies such as the Bonneville Power Administration. Interest group opposition at Hells
Canyon—beginning in 1945 and initially led by an energy corporation—opened the door
for other opponents, such as conservationists and ecologists who spoke for salmon and wild
rivers. Unplugging the New Deal's multiple-purpose dam program in the Snake River val-
ley empowered old and new stakeholders across the country. 7
A second western battle further cracked the New Deal's big dam consensus. Successful
opposition to one of the Bureau of Reclamation's Colorado River Storage Project dams in
Echo Park (Colo.) also convinced an emerging postwar community of environmental stake-
holders that federal dam building could be stopped. Activists defended Dinosaur National
Monument and the National Park Service's mission from a big dam on the Green River.
By 1956, park and river advocates argued in favor of wilderness and questioned the bur-
eau's benefit-cost analysis and technological claims. They defeated the Echo Park dam and
launched a national environmental movement led by personalities such as David Brower
who championed wilderness and wild rivers for the next two decades. After Hells Canyon
and Echo Park, few western dams moved forward without dedicated, professional, and na-
tionalized opposition. 8
In the Southeast, leaders in the rising Sun Belt doubled down. The New Deal big dam
consensus changed tact but plowed forward at full speed to resolve the region's persist-