Big Dam Backlash Rising in the Sun Belt - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 95

deed manage flooding and soil in the headwaters, but these measures would do little to
prevent flooding downstream, where large dams best alleviated flooding. Regardless of
the technology, flood control did “not mean the elimination of floods,” in their profession-
al opinion. 58 Big dam critics compared small watershed impoundments with the Corps'
big dams as though they were the same fruit, but Leopold and Maddox thought the op-
tions were more like apples and oranges. The Corps' main-stem multiple-purpose reser-
voirs and the SCS's small watershed projects were ultimately compatible, but they were
not interchangeable. Despite this objective assessment, not all southerners were convinced,
and many believed small watershed plans were economically and politically more valu-
able than multiple-purpose Corps dams. South Carolinians labeled the Corps' projects as
nothing but “big dam foolishness,” a characterization they picked up from a midwestern
journalist who popularized opposition to the Corps' general program of water management.
Elmer Peterson published his topic, Big Dam Foolishness , in the same year Leopold and
Maddock published theirs. One particular USDA small watershed project in the Savannah
River valley illustrates how the process worked and was infused with Peterson's rhetoric. 59
The Twelve Mile Creek watershed project in Pickens County, South Carolina, located
high up in the Savannah River's watershed, contained 790 farms spread over 67,000 acres.
According to one cheery Greenville newspaper writer, farmers and soil conservationists
worked “to see how efficient a job man can do with Nature's help in storing as much water
as possible in the land where it falls and thereby reducing the flood flow with accompa-
nying damage to land.” Journalist David Tillinghast toured the watershed, and he bristled
at the cost of the Corps' Hartwell dam and reservoir while enthusiastically trumpeting the
benefits of the small watershed program. The Twelve Mile Creek project, which included
small dams on headwater farms and land treatments in erosion-prone areas, was technic-
ally a much cheaper flood control option when compared with Hartwell. 60 Other editors
followed Tillinghast's lead in a statewide campaign. The Charleston News and Courier
editor was more inclined to see federal money spent on multiple smaller watershed pro-
jects throughout the state. Smaller farm ponds in particular would provide a better “method
of conserving water, and controlling floods at the source.” This type of watershed plan-
ning “could be adapted to the entire state with excellent results at half the cost of Hartwell
Dam,” because the USDA's small watershed project costs were “shared by local and federal
sources.” 61 Another columnist concluded that the cost-sharing alone made the small water-
shed program more democratic because farmers and conservation district members worked
with federal engineers to complete projects and manage local water supplies. 62 Local con-
trol—or a hyperfocused states' rights attitude—soon infused the debate of water and power
in the Savannah River valley.
Georgia's and South Carolina's 1950s drought not only highlighted competition among
water users and potential alternatives to massive reservoirs; the drought also uncovered