Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
enterprise between the New South era and the beginning of the Great Depression. A hand-
ful of private companies manipulated southern waters to generate electricity primarily for
urban, industrial, and commercial—not rural and agricultural—constituencies from Missis-
sippi to Tennessee and from Georgia to Virginia. The Wall Street crash and Great Flood
of 1929 were the major turning points for the Savannah River valley, and the New Deal
provided a wedge for federal agencies to participate in sculpting the future of the nation's
hydraulic waterscapes. Managing old and new environmental conditions, and energy and
water, would never be the same. The TVA presented an alternative program for resource
management, but many Americans and Congress rejected the TVA model, leaving other
federal agencies like the Corps to negotiate with multiple stakeholders over the fate of
southern rivers. This experience presented all Sun Belt parties—public and private, large
and small—interested in southern waterscapes with very different circumstances and new
options.
