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78 the impact of dam building This piece was the concluding chapter in The History of Large Federal Dams: Planning , Design, and Construction, and as such, it deals especially with the story and environmental impacts of big dam development. This chapter also had a western orientation largely because of the book’s strong emphasis on the Big Dam Era, lasting from 1935 to 1965, which gave us, among others, Hoover, Grand Coulee, and Glen Canyon Dams located west of the Mississippi River. The dynamic impact of dam building and the contradictory perceptions of dams themselves, however, raise several universal issues beyond the geographic focus represented here. The most dynamic means of harnessing a river is dam building. Although there are countless small private dams throughout all of the watersheds in the United States, the biggest and most impressive are those constructed with public money. The Big Dam Era of the early twentieth century was the most memorable dam-building period of all, but such mammoth construction was by no means restricted to one brief moment in history. In more recent years, the majesty of the great dams, and many less grand structures, faced severe criticism as impediments to the free flow of rivers, destroyers of fish populations, potential disaster risks, and more. The swing from human-made wonder to environmental threat should come as no surprise. Dams always have been contested technology. Among their strong advocates, for example, dams offered flood control, irrigation, urban water supply , electric power, and recreational opportunities. Despite the rationalization for chapter four The Environmental Impact of the Big Dam Era the environmental impact of the big dam era 79 multipurpose use—and thus the ability to serve numerous consumers—the uses of dams, dam water, dam-built lakes and reservoirs served different people in different ways and often led to government regulations setting priorities or outright battles (legal and otherwise) between users. The battle for water rights and water use pitted city leaders against farmers, city against city, and cities against small towns. Even if the contesting parties could resolve their differences, dam building created other losers too. Flooding land for reservoirs wrested property from Native Americans, small farmers, and others, changing arable landscapes into artificial waterscapes. Intensive construction of dams and reservoirs sometimes threatened land considered too sublime to be disrupted or flooded. Anadromous fish such as salmon perished or were vastly diminished. Water flow was altered or altogether stopped along great stretches of formerly free-flowing rivers. Dams, in fact and in theory, represent a rather simple technical idea with very complex implications. It is precisely because big dams, especially, were public ventures that this chapter was included here. Particularly in the New Deal years and beyond, dams were graphic examples of the spread of federal water activity into a variety of new arenas. That period also saw the maturing of national resources planning of which dams also were a central objective.1 Possibly the most telling example of the federal role in river management was the Pick-Sloan Compromise in 1944 to deal with conflicting interests over flood control in the Missouri River Valley. Some cities along the river sided with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and others with the Bureau of Reclamation. Congress intervened and produced a compromise that allowed the corps to manage dams, navigation, and flood control in downstream areas, and gave the Bureau of Reclamation management of upstream reservoirs for irrigation, municipal use, and power production. This led to a massive dam- and levee-building program in the Missouri River Valley and beyond.2 Big dams are indeed the most graphic symbol of a program that proclaims water as a public resource. Not only are the largest and most significant dams public ventures, but their construction, use, and possible dismantling have been and continue to be the subject of public regulation, public policy, and public concern. The Environmental Impact of the Big Dam Era In a 1941 book, American Bridges and Dams, Paul Zueker wrote: “Of all works of engineering, the perfect bridge most nearly approaches the realm of art—the dam, the realm of nature.” Dams compared with “God’s immovable mountains.” Zucker went on to suggest that, “no other achievement of peaceful civilization during the last two decades on this war-torn earth has contributed more to the welfare of future generations than the building of dams in this country.” The dam’s legacy consisted of storing water, averting and controlling floods, irrigation, conservation...

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