Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
1933. As an institution, the Corps did not want to manage the Savannah River valley on
the scale found in Arizona or Tennessee, nor did the Corps leadership desire to radically
reshape the valley's energy and water landscape in the 1930s as Georgia Power and Duke
Power had elsewhere. Furthermore, managing flood risks remained a peripheral objective
Corps engineers met with levees and not with dams. What dramatically changed for the
dam-adverse Corps leadership, and why did they embark on a program to build the massive
multiple-purpose flood, drought, and energy structures that exist today in the Savannah
River valley and throughout the nation? In short, complex environmental and economic
disasters accelerated institutional change already under way.
Legislative representatives who believed in the power of the conservation state approved
multiple hydrologic, geographic, and forestry investigations that efficiently cataloged the
environmental resources of the nation's river valleys, including the Savannah, between
1900 and 1930. Federal and state professionals looked at the landscape with lenses con-
figured to see flood control mechanisms, navigation structures, and electrical generation
facilities, among other things. To grasp the range of the basin's environmental resources,
congressional committees relied on trained specialists and engineers to catalog the actual
and potential assets, as well as the liabilities and risks, of rivers throughout the country.
22
Corps officers and engineers continued to harbor skepticism of multiple-purpose dams
and reservoirs as viable technologies well into the 1930s and only began to think system-
atically beyond single-purpose water management options when forced by legislators to
explore comprehensive river development. Congress also acted in response to mounting
evidence generated by Progressives and populists that utility monopolies were growing not
just in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina, but across the country.
23
Congressional representatives decided to participate in this national water management and
conservation boom in 1925 and instructed the Corps to estimate the cost for a national river
and hydroelectric power survey. In what was also known as “House Document 308,” the
Corps recommended that Congress move quickly so federal agencies could get a head start,
or perhaps work in conjunction with companies, in order “to secure adequate data to insure
that waterway developments by private enterprise would fit into a general plan for the full
utilization of the water resources of” any study river. Congress approved funding in 1927,
and over the next decade agents of the conservation state efficiently cataloged nearly every
river in the country and produced professional reports affectionately called “308 Reports”
in reference to the congressional document that initiated the survey process.
24
The Savannah River's 308 Report study assimilated corporate and public data that ul-
timately shaped New Dealers' liberal vision for southern rivers. The Savannah District's
engineers reached out to corporate executives and engineers to better understand the
New South's energy and water infrastructure. Corps engineers incorporated data, plans,
strategies, and information accumulated by corporate representatives during the 308 study.
