Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
reographed, and at times misleading public battle portraying Clemson College as a victim,
the Corps eventually built the levee initially recommended by Reid et al. to keep Hartwell
outcomes,
The Truth about “Hartwell”
ultimately preached one conservative conclusion:
New Deal-inspired public energy and water projects threatened individual rights and com-
promised the free market.
South Carolina representative William Jennings Bryan Dorn (1916-2005) did not direc-
tly respond to
The Truth about “Hartwell,”
but he did put his own spin on the socialist
and conservative rhetoric. Dorn, a New Deal Democrat who served thirteen congressional
terms between 1948 and 1974, explained to one constituent that his visits to the TVA's and
the Columbia River's multiple-purpose water and energy projects had hardened his resolve
to see the Hartwell development through to completion. He believed Hartwell would deliv-
er prosperity to “the desperately poor people of the Savannah Valley…. It will help small
industries and in aiding small industries and the rural people, it most certainly helps those
people to be independent and will help them to resist Socialism and Communism.” For
Dorn the emphasis behind public projects and postwar liberalism's goal was to put indi-
viduals back on their feet, promote local industry, and thus provide jobs for able-bodied
white Americans who could then ascend to middle-class status. This was the Sun Belt's
operative goal for many southern Democrats.
37
Executives with the Charlotte-based Duke Power Company did weigh in on the Hartwell
situation, but not because they were directly threatened at the moment. Duke Power, not
unlike Georgia Power after 1945, wanted to revive its version of capitalism and elimin-
ate competing energy proposals in the Savannah River valley associated with the lingering
New Deal big dam consensus. Duke, of course, cut its corporate teeth in the New South
era and turned the Catawba River valley into a vast “hydro-industrial empire,” according
to the majority of upstate South Carolina. Given this experience, Duke's executives offered
technical analysis to South Carolina's politicians regarding Hartwell's hydroelectric value
in comparison with the company's proven steam technologies. According to one Duke ex-
ecutive, the company had shifted to coal and steam generation after 1940 and had addi-
tional plants in the pipeline. Based on a long operations history, company employees un-
derstood the complexities of planning new facilities, managing generation, and attracting
future customers. David Nabow recognized “that the large increases in the demands for
electric power in the Company's service area [had] outgrown the limited hydro-electric
potentialities in this area.” As such, “the primary dependence must therefore continue to
be placed on large and efficient steam-electric generating plants” and “economical hydro-
electric sites” if necessary. In short, steam technology was more cost-effective and efficient
