Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the Great Depression, a great debate emerged over who was best suited to manage a river
valley's water and energy resources and to manage the hydraulic waterscape. Since the re-
gion's flooding and drought problems were partially manufactured, the individuals and in-
stitutions that shaped the conversation about causes and solutions exerted considerable in-
fluence.
Southern Democrats contemplated their water and energy choices and calculated any
pushback as their national party struggled to hold together a coalition of black and white
workers and farmers. Anxious to block continued liberal attempts to advance civil rights
and labor reform, but still hungry for federal investment in infrastructure, southern politi-
cians repackaged the New Deal big dam consensus. They turned over flood, drought, and
energy futures of the Savannah, Chattahoochee, and other river valleys to the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers. The Corps, with new power and practical New Deal training, separ-
ated the TVA's idealized social planning from the more practical trio of benefits. Corps
engineers operating within their old agency emerged as the new arbiters responsible for
balancing the legacies of New South laissez-faire and New Deal liberalism to meet the
Sun Belt's anticipated energy demands and water needs after 1944. Before the Corps fully
launched this new mission, private and public debate over a place called Clarks Hill disrup-
ted the Corps' self-imposed limits and dragged the agency onto center stage at a time when
southerners were growing increasingly frustrated with the region's water problems, the old
New South corporate models, and the New Deal's faltering liberal solutions. The American
South's water and energy future remained central to this debate as New South capitalism
and New Deal liberalism squared off.
A long history of floods convinced Augusta residents, congressional representatives, and
federal agents to further evaluate local flood control solutions in the late nineteenth century.
Augusta, located at the fall line that divides the Piedmont and the upper Coastal Plain,
had experienced high water as far back as 1800. Early Corps surveys, including Lieuten-
ant Oberlin Carter's 1890 investigation, studied flood control and water storage options
throughout the Savannah River valley in conjunction with the Corps' primary function:
navigational improvement and keeping the nation's waterways open for boats and barges
by clearing debris, dredging channels, and battling shifting sandbars.
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Carter and his assistant, George Brown, hedged when they considered separating human
and natural activity while identifying water problems and offering solutions in the Savan-
nah River valley. They reported in 1890 that “it does not lie within the power of man to re-
move the causes of the destructive floods in the Savannah River valley, although their evil
effects” could be “lessened” with improved agricultural and forestry practices in a region
still arrested by globalized King Cotton. Their 1890 report noted river bottoms covered in
willow, poplar, and sycamore with dense island canebrakes, in addition to the river's obvi-
ous shift from clear to muddied water. The “small gullies” that evolved into “deep gorges”
