Countryside Conservatism and Conservation - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 117

tion, rural electric and telephone appropriations, and price supports on basic commodities,”
according to one journalist. Farmers who had suffered through the 1954 drought were in-
terested in “legislation for establishment of water rights” because existing law was unclear,
out of date, and often pitted municipal, industrial, and agricultural users against one an-
other. 55 By the late 1950s, Georgians and South Carolinians saw states', civil, and water
“rights” converging across the Sun Belt's hydraulic waterscape.
Water projects are an unlikely place to look for this conflation of rights and were far
removed from the suburbs of Charlotte (N.C.), Atlanta (Ga.), and Orange County (Calif.),
where others have found the roots of the New Right and modern conservatism. 56 In the
southern countryside, communities considered access to the Savannah River's water as a
critical component to their continually diversifying and growing commercial Sun Belt eco-
nomy. Water politics was another site to locate social power, and the Savannah River val-
ley's water remained highly contested by those who supported federal energy projects and
those who advocated for corporations. According to critics, the Corps' public water and
energy schemes made water access more difficult and directly challenged states' rights and
strangled local economic development. The Brown decision only exacerbated the southern
water and power dynamic.
By the 1960s, southerners' frustration with federal water politics threatened an already
fragile Democratic Party. Constituent disappointment with Clarks Hill and reluctance with
Hartwell morphed into a full-bore big dam backlash against the Trotters Shoals water and
energy program. When the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations began
to address civil rights between 1960 and 1965, some southern Democrats became confused
about the party's direction. As one letter to Senator Olin Johnston asked, “How can you
kick Kennedys [ sic ] civil rights Bill and at the same time condone this power take over by
the federal government” at Trotters Shoals? Another asked him to “oppose the so-called
'public-accommodations' legislation proposed by the Kennedy family,” while also ask-
ing him to reconsider his support for Trotters Shoals. 57 While Johnston supported Trotters
Shoals, his partner in the Senate, Strom Thurmond, did not. Trotters Shoals was the first of
the Corps' three Savannah River valley dams that Thurmond did not back, and he bolted
the Democratic Party in favor of a Republican affiliation in 1964 because of the Demo-
crats' direction over civil rights.
Trotters Shoals's opponents connected civil rights with Sun Belt water and energy pro-
jects. One letter commended Senator Olin D. Johnston on his decision not “to support the
President on the Civil Rights package legislation demanded of Congress.” In the author's
opinion, the senator's action proved “to me that you are not willing to submit to the influen-
ce of the mob, and of the Kennedy Dynasty. You, as a representative of the South and of the
state of South Carolina, must help curb the growing power of the 'liberals' and help restore
the system of governmental checks and balances.” South Carolinians, like Frank Harrison