Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
squared off in the Savannah River valley. They clashed over who would control water sup-
plies, the necessary ingredient for the organic energy systems the Corps set out to com-
plete and for Duke Power's planned Middleton Shoals (coal) and Keowee-Toxaway (nuc-
lear) generation facilities. Who would get to manage and dictate solutions for Sun Belt wa-
ter problems—and thus influence commercial development—got increasingly complicated
after another major drought in the 1950s.
The private utilities discovered unlikely allies in the postwar environmental and con-
servative “rights” movements. Some Sun Belt conservatives defended free enterprise and
championed freedom from federal intervention in economic matters. Others, who called the
Corps' energy and water projects “big dam foolishness,” turned to the USDA. The USDA's
Small Watershed Program, in some critics' opinions, represented a better and more demo-
cratic plan to control water where it fell on the land. Luna Leopold watched the national
flood control debate unfold and believed the two federal water control programs worked
together in harmony better than one in the absence of the other. Other critics also emerged.
Sun Belt countryside conservationists and environmentalists challenged the old corporate
and the new federal dam builders. They defended free-flowing watercourses in the Savan-
nah River watershed from pollution and energy development. They organized their local
communities, not around the old issues of water quantity and conservation but around wa-
ter quality. They recognized that free-flowing water and lots of clean water were critical
components for emerging Sun Belt commercial and leisure economies. “Locals,” particu-
larly those with no political power, no interest in waterskiing, or no desire for whitewater
rafting, did not see value in levees, reservoirs, or protected rivers that eliminated existing
communities or limited individual behavior. Within this conservative and environmental
discourse, the Sun Belt's few wild rivers—such as the Chattooga National Wild and Scen-
ic River, best described by James Dickey's fiction and John Lane's nonfiction—revealed a
power to engage communities and empower individuals, for better and worse.
These loosely constructed time periods produced particular projects to meet particular
needs or to solve a particular problem—southern, water, or other. As has been clear
throughout this topic, the hydraulic waterscape tells us three things about southern envir-
onmental history. First, water supply solutions have almost always been linked to energy
choices. Second, drought history tells us water supply had never been secure, and increas-
ing supplies or controlling floods only represented short-term solutions. Southern droughts
have a history, too, and the recent droughts were not one-offs but part of a longer pattern
of cycles and weather whiplash. Finally, water will continue to drive the regional political
economy as population and an increasing array of economic sectors demand additional wa-
ter resources. Conflict over water—for energy, economic development, and recreation—is
not new.
