Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
a “conference phase” where state and local authorities attempted to resolve water pollution
problems. If state and local authorities could not resolve the problem, the U.S. surgeon gen-
eral (Public Health Service) could take the alleged polluter to court. This happened only
once before 1966.
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The pollution issue helped build support for Trotters Shoals. South Carolina countryside
conservationists rallied behind Trotters Shoals, and they cited the potential for industrial
pollution as the single most important reason to support the federal dam and reservoir pro-
ject. As early as 1962, one group of South Carolina citizens rejected Mead's plans for a
pulp and paper mill on the Savannah River. Attorney James Nickles wrote to Georgia's
Senator Russell and stated, “The people of Abbeville County are not the least interested
in” Mead's mill because the company planned to “pour their poison chemicals” and indus-
flow between the Hartwell dam and Clarks Hill reservoir, and Nickles's allies argued that
Mead's proposed location was unacceptable “because there is no CONTINUOUS flow of
Peyton Hawes, these South Carolina countryside conservationists cited the potential for
water pollution as a justification to dam the Savannah River and build a new reservoir that
could fill with high-quality clean water. The Corps' Trotters Shoals project, however, was
still not a guaranteed project after Congress approved the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1966
and authorized the $84.9 million Trotters Shoals project. In the legislative and budgetary
process, authorization to proceed is never the same as appropriation of the required mon-
ies; funding would come in fits and starts until the project was operational in the 1980s.
The boosters, politicians, and citizens who defended Trotters Shoals and rejected polluting
industries for twenty years faced a new issue after the private-versus-public-energy, jobs-
and-free enterprise, and pollution challenges.
Sun Belt environmentalists rallied in the 1970s. The individuals who opposed Trotters
Shoals on new environmental grounds differed slightly from the countryside conservation-
ists. Local citizens plus university professors, state agency employees, and representatives
from national conservation and environmental organizations raised a new tool in the name
of Sun Belt environmental health and challenged previously powerful actors.
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A new piece of federal legislation invited public participation in massive federal public
works projects. Congress—with a Democratic majority in the House and Senate—passed,
and President Richard Nixon (R) signed into law, the National Environmental Policy Act
(1969) three years after Congress authorized Trotters Shoals. NEPA, as the act was known,
created the Council on Environmental Quality to set the nation's environmental policy
shortly before Nixon crafted additional legislation to form the Environmental Protection
Agency in late 1970 to manage both the Council on Environmental Quality's and NEPA's
mandates. NEPA, according to supporters and critics, threw a wrench into the gears of
