Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
for nearly a decade, he could claim, “This entire development, both Federal and private,
ated a climate for public and private power to co-develop the Savannah River's hydraulic
waterscape. Congress soon authorized $84.9 million for Trotters Shoals in the Rivers and
Harbors Act of 1966 and approved Duke's Middleton Shoals diversion dam. Then the FPC
comprehensive development plan of mixed corporate and federal institutions looked com-
plete, and the Sun Belt's commercial future looked bright.
The compromise, however, did not address a nagging water problem that had emerged in
the years leading up to the 1966 agreement: water quality. As with previous federal water
and energy projects in the Savannah River valley, boosters formed a committee—the Trot-
ters Shoals Steering Committee—to promote the dam and lake. Georgia's Peyton Hawes,
picking up where Augusta's Lester Moody left off, chaired the new committee and tackled
water pollution head-on. He explained that Trotters Shoals, like the other two Savannah
River dams, was designed to provide cost-effective peak electricity, water for municipal
and industrial use, recreational opportunities, and a stimulus for economic development.
Another anticipated benefit included projected increases in land values and the use of lake-
front property for recreation and vacation homes. Hawes also proclaimed that the industri-
al sites along the free-flowing Savannah River between Clarks Hill reservoir and Hartwell
dam were inappropriate for most industrial companies such as Mead.
Peyton Hawes explained in 1963 that chemical and pulp paper mills required clean
water for production and fast-moving water for disposal and assimilation. As such, “In-
dustries needing free flowing water” were often “polluting industries.” This kind of indus-
trial development, Hawes argued, would turn the slow-flowing Savannah River below the
Hartwell dam and the Clarks Hill reservoir into cesspools. And because Hawes and his al-
lies believed the region was “one of the few areas in the nation where clean, fresh water
is still available in substantial supply,” they wanted to “develop and conserve these great
tion and to saving this section of the Savannah from industrial effluent was not to harden
effluent regulations or the enforcement apparatus. Instead, Hawes wanted to eliminate in-
dustrial sites by transforming the river into a clean water pool between two existing reser-
voirs.
Water pollution in the Savannah River valley was not necessarily a new problem. Water
quality had long been on the minds of Savannah River valley residents. Since the nine-
teenth century, fishermen had lamented a decline in migratory fish, and Corps engineers
observed sediment deposits throughout the upper and middle sections of the river. Lower
Savannah River valley residents had also connected water pollution from Savannah, Geor-
