Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
to divert 600 acre-feet (196 million gallons) per year from the reservoir to McCormick cus-
reservoir but soon soured when they attempted to increase their water withdrawals and ac-
quire surplus reservoir lands because the county wanted to woo industrial prospects; they
entered a bureaucratic maze.
By the late 1950s, the Corps' process for evaluating water supply requests had evolved
according to the terms of the newly established Water Supply Act (1958). McCormick
County executives and lawyers were irritated when they had to ask for permission a second
able land for the Clarks Hill project, and many residents in the region were increasingly
the Corps to reallocate storage in federal reservoirs—like Clarks Hill—for uses that were
not specifically included in a project's authorization, such as domestic and industrial wa-
ter supply. As Brigadier General William F. Cassidy explained to Senator Thurmond, after
receipt of an application, Corps engineers would determine if water allocation would “'ser-
iously' affect the purposes for which the project was authorized or would involve major
structural or operational changes.” If a proposed request would ultimately alter operations
at Clarks Hill, congressional approval was “required before a water supply agreement could
be finalized.” And the final decision would hinge on the quantity of water removed and
the quality of the water returned, as well as if the water would be returned to a different
ment had to resolve what the chamber considered a federal reservoir water supply and wa-
ter rights problem because county officials and boosters needed to convey to industrial reps
searching for new sites that water was available from Clarks Hill and how much that water
would cost.
70
As the Hartwell dam and reservoir project moved through the planning phases upstream
on the Savannah River, South Carolina congressman William Jennings Bryan Dorn com-
municated with the Corps about the new reservoir's water allocation process in light of the
Clarks Hill and McCormick situation. Since Congress did not initially authorize Hartwell to
provide a municipal water supply for any community in South Carolina or Georgia, Corps
officers explained how the water allocation process worked, much as engineers had ex-
plained it to Senator Thurmond months earlier.
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In light of these water allocation negotiations and drought conditions, some South
Carolinians reduced the issue to a question of states' rights. One informed the McCormick
chamber of commerce that federal control of water supply in federal reservoirs was symp-
tomatic of “the gradual attrition of the individual states' historical rights to control water
in no uncertain terms to a group of Corps engineers. Harrison was particularly interested in
