Big Dam Backlash Rising in the Sun Belt - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 91

ated 40,000 acres. Not only did the ponds produce nearly 450 pounds of fish per acre
for anglers; farmers also used the ponds to water livestock, combat erosion, and control
floodwaters. But these water supply tools should not be confused with the Savannah River
valley's enormous Hartwell or Clarks Hill reservoirs. 42 These smaller impoundments and
structures also revealed a growing competition for water among a variety of agricultural,
industrial, and municipal water consumers vying for a common public resource. Farmers,
factory managers, and city water managers clashed throughout the state as water supplies
evaporated or dwindled. When farmers built ponds to water livestock upstream of factories,
the reduced downstream flow compromised factory operations. In one county, an upstream
farm pond so reduced downstream flows that five commercial enterprises were without wa-
ter for nearly five months. In Newton County (Ga.), one upstream farm and irrigation pond
consumed so much water that a downstream factory had to shut down because it could not
produce enough energy in an onsite steam plant. And finally, some fish pond owners com-
plained about the lack of dilution for pollution that washed downstream—from military in-
stallations, factories, homes, and other farms—into their ponds and killed fish or threatened
livestock health. 43 Water problems in Georgia's ponds in the 1950s were not limited to
quantity; quality was an emerging and real concern.
The drought also affected urban and agricultural communities in the Savannah River val-
ley and around Georgia. Newspapers published a grim report of urban drought in the sum-
mer and fall of 1954 before Governor Herman Talmadge's prayer service in Macon. For
example, the city of Washington's water supply was so depleted that the city council con-
sidered “a complete shutdown of water service during certain hours of the day as a neces-
sary conservation measure.” City ordinances also banned “unnecessary” water use activit-
ies such as car washing and lawn and garden watering and threatened $100 fines. 44 By the
fall, the metro Atlanta community of East Point purchased and transferred 85 million gal-
lons of water from Douglas County. 45
The drought was caused not only by a lack of rainfall but also by the region's historical
shift from the so-called Cotton Belt to a diversified Sun Belt. Southern farmers, of course,
had always produced crops other than cotton, such as tobacco, vegetables, and fruit orch-
ards. And boosters had been attempting to balance industry with agriculture since the nine-
teenth century. But Sun Belt economic choices accelerated and exacerbated a shift away
from old monocultures such as cotton and the textile industry.
Livestock was one example of new growth in the post-1945 agricultural sector. In 1954,
South Carolina agricultural officials thought the state's 437,000 head of cattle consumed
8.5 million gallons of water per day, and this figure did not include other animals such
as hogs and poultry. Water, as journalist W. D. Workman declared, was an irreplaceable
“commodity” necessary for industrial, agricultural, and municipal development. But, wa-
ter's “vital importance” had been neglected by “layman and law-maker alike.” In South