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Abstract:This paper examines the far-reaching influence of anti-dam movement on the protection of environment in the second half of the 20th century in American West. It first introduces the historical background of dams built along the Colorado River-the most important river in the West, especially the construction of Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam. Then, the criticism of dams on the Colorado is examined with the emphasis on the anti-dam movement resulting from the awareness of the negative ecological impacts on the Colorado. In the conclusion, the author demonstrates the unparallel historical significance of the anti-dam movement in the environmentalism in developing the American West.
Key Words:ecological effects nature conquest environmentalism anti-dam movement
I. Introduction
The West is defined as an arid and semi-arid region, the only exception being the Pacific Northwest. The history of the West is filled with stories of adventure, conquest, and of frontier hardship. Before WWII, the history of the West was dominated by Turner’s Frontier School, which treated the West as a unique American experience with features of a pastoral garden but paid little attention to the lack of water in the region and the effects of this factor on the pastoral dream. Thus, the Colorado River-the most important river of the West became the aim of the man’s conquest from the early 1900s. In the span of less than a century, more than 20 dams were built on the river to transform the arid landscape for local development. However, from the 1950s the deteriorating ecological effects gave rise to the anti-dam movement in the West with the criticism of the Glen Canyon Dam as its focus. Thanks to the unyielding struggle carried out by the environmentalists, American public awareness of preservation was exalted and they began to give true reflection to their triumph over nature in the West.
II. The Big-Dam Building Decades
As the 20th century dawned, the Imperial Valley in California was among the first areas to tap the true potential of the river. According to Hundley, in early 1901, the 60-mile-long Alamo Canal, developed by private concerns, was completed to deliver Colorado River water for irrigation. From 1905 to 1907 when the Colorado caused great amounts of flooding in parts of Arizona and California, demands again grew for a storage reservoir and a dam on the river so as to get the floods under control and meet the water needs of the rapid growth of the lower basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada in population and agriculture . From 1918 to 1921, the upriver and downriver states were unable to resolve their differences. The conflict was most bitter surrounding Boulder Dam-a structure proposed to tame the Colorado.
The primary factor in damming the Colorado River was the demand for water to prosper this area, but the flood and drought cycles challenged development efforts and often washed out irrigation headgates, inundating fields and towns. Laguna Dam, the first major dam on the river was completed in 1909, "but the structure on the Colorado capable of controlling the river flow began with the construction of Hoover Dam in 1935" . After that, water development agencies such as the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers across the nation and particularly in the West launched "a forty-year binge" of dam building . According to Fradkin, there were more than 20 dams built on the Colorado River during this period of time, which both culminated in and ended in the last high dam built by the Bureau in 1963-Glen Canyon Dam. All these dams symbolized the progress made in the development of the water resources of the country during that period through federal efforts.
Hoover Dam in Black Canyon was considered as "one of the most spectacular feats of engineering in the history of the world when completed in 1935" . The big dam was extremely important step ever taken to tame this wild river and put it to work to supply water for domestic use, irrigation and to generate electric energy. Marc Rainser commented, "Hoover Dam, as a showcase, contributed a great deal to the renewal of people’s confidence in the depression years of 1930’s".
The establishment of the dam showed that the Americans could control nature in a powerful new way with the help of advanced technology. The dam was conceived as a massive and complex machine created by American industrial invention to conquer the surrounding arid landscape and to create an urban civilization, an agribusiness empire. This modern miracle was a culture power representing a new thought, which focused on means or effective instrument instead of the ultimate end and value. It was with this impressive and divine-like power that other dams included in the Boulder Canyon Project were built with the justification that such public works would help stimulate the economy.
Davis Dam was built in 1953 for re-regulating Hoover Dam releases to meet downstream needs. It was followed by Morelos Dam, Palo Verde Diversion Dam and Headgate Rock Diversion Dam, "all built to serve the purpose of diverting water for agriculture purposes in Mexico, Southern California and Southern Arizona" . This furious dam building culminated in the authorization of the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) in 1956. Thus, in the upper basin CRSP led to a series of dams-Blue Mesa, Crystal and Morrow Point dams in Colorado, Flaming Gorge Dam in Utah, Navajo Dam in New Mexico. The list appears endless, "all of them echoing a lost, colorful frontier past, all of them in fact denoting a technological sameness and emerging industrial era" . Glen Canyon Dam, the last big dam built under CRSP in the Colorado River Basin, was the largest and key structure in controlling water releases to the lower basin. ONCLUSIOn
(The American 45~46).Just as Puritans celebrated westward expansion as one of their greatest achievements, millions of Americans felt proud of their water engineering in the West for the visible reason that they transformed desert lands and made them agriculturally productive. Those dams represented man’s effective domination of nature with the help of advanced weapons and tool.
Ⅲ. The Rise of Anti-Dam Movement in the West
Between 1940 and 1950, the New Deal’s environmental legacies were significant as much as problematic. In 1940 the Bureau of Reclamation had many western dams in its planning docket, “but for the most part, ignorance and indifference to the adverse environmental impacts has accompanied their construction.Its agricultural programs and dam-building projects propped up western agricultural economies while sacrificing prairie landscapes across the West. Most importantly, this new-found preservation movement, largely sparked by the protests against several major dam projects, emerged as one of the most important new social and political movements to survive the 1960s and has taken root as an essential part of American life thereafter.
The event which launched the modern environmental movement was the battle between the economic interests and protectionist groups led by the Sierra Club. This time, the dams were not just named after the West’s most storied rivers, but would be built in some of its most stupendous canyon landscapes under protection. The hot issue was the division of precious Colorado River water between the states situated in the Colorado River Basin through the Bureau of Reclamation’s billion-dollar Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP). "Among the planned 10 dams were several that inflamed the environmental community to launch a protracted battle that lasted 15 years, from 1950 to 1965" . At issue in the beginning was the Bureau’s decision to build a dam on the Green River at Echo Park that would have backed reservoir waters into Dinosaur National Monument’s Yampa River Canyon. The Echo Park controversy was regarded as a "test case" in that it highlighted the conflict of two values-conquering and protecting the wilderness. Given the tragic experience of Hetch Hetchy, the protectionists led by David Brower, then executive of the Sierra Club, vowed to defend the wilderness with all their efforts. Then owing to the pressure from the protectionists and the public, the government endorsed a version of the Project without the controversial dams. As a result, the protectionists won a great victory in wilderness protection through successfully stopping a dam on the Green River.
Equally important was the determination of the resistance to water development in the case of Dinosaur Monument. The protectionists prepared themselves for a larger battle by pooling their efforts in several lobbying agencies, such as the Emergency Committee on National Resources and the Council of Conservationists. Meanwhile, the philosophy of ecological significance and land ethic was applied to the fight against the dam. Protectionists argued that Dinosaur was important both as an exhibit of normal ecological process and as a gesture of human respect for the biotic community of life. In the battle an increasing number of Americans became convinced of the importance of the wilderness in modern civilization. More importantly, the protection movement began carrying more weight with the government decision thanks to "the wider public support and the improvement in their skill as political fighters.
In fact, the successful passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964 was to a large degree stimulated by the Dinosaur case. Determining to capitalize on the momentum of the triumph of the Echo Park decision, leading protectionists pressed for a more positive and systematic wilderness protection. Deeply influenced by the land ethic of Leopold, the ecological concerns were recognized in the Act content that "a wilderness may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value" . Realizing that modern industries were causing them with more and more damage to their environment, American citizens began to adopt cautious and positive attitudes toward their natural environment. As a result, during November 1958, 1,003 letters were received in the Senate hearings conducted in Oregon, California, Utah, and New Mexico. With the passage of the Act, the federal government formally expressed their intent to keep the wild portion of its land permanently wild. However, there existed discrepancy between the original proposal and the final act.
Key Words:ecological effects nature conquest environmentalism anti-dam movement
I. Introduction
The West is defined as an arid and semi-arid region, the only exception being the Pacific Northwest. The history of the West is filled with stories of adventure, conquest, and of frontier hardship. Before WWII, the history of the West was dominated by Turner’s Frontier School, which treated the West as a unique American experience with features of a pastoral garden but paid little attention to the lack of water in the region and the effects of this factor on the pastoral dream. Thus, the Colorado River-the most important river of the West became the aim of the man’s conquest from the early 1900s. In the span of less than a century, more than 20 dams were built on the river to transform the arid landscape for local development. However, from the 1950s the deteriorating ecological effects gave rise to the anti-dam movement in the West with the criticism of the Glen Canyon Dam as its focus. Thanks to the unyielding struggle carried out by the environmentalists, American public awareness of preservation was exalted and they began to give true reflection to their triumph over nature in the West.
II. The Big-Dam Building Decades
As the 20th century dawned, the Imperial Valley in California was among the first areas to tap the true potential of the river. According to Hundley, in early 1901, the 60-mile-long Alamo Canal, developed by private concerns, was completed to deliver Colorado River water for irrigation. From 1905 to 1907 when the Colorado caused great amounts of flooding in parts of Arizona and California, demands again grew for a storage reservoir and a dam on the river so as to get the floods under control and meet the water needs of the rapid growth of the lower basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada in population and agriculture . From 1918 to 1921, the upriver and downriver states were unable to resolve their differences. The conflict was most bitter surrounding Boulder Dam-a structure proposed to tame the Colorado.
The primary factor in damming the Colorado River was the demand for water to prosper this area, but the flood and drought cycles challenged development efforts and often washed out irrigation headgates, inundating fields and towns. Laguna Dam, the first major dam on the river was completed in 1909, "but the structure on the Colorado capable of controlling the river flow began with the construction of Hoover Dam in 1935" . After that, water development agencies such as the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers across the nation and particularly in the West launched "a forty-year binge" of dam building . According to Fradkin, there were more than 20 dams built on the Colorado River during this period of time, which both culminated in and ended in the last high dam built by the Bureau in 1963-Glen Canyon Dam. All these dams symbolized the progress made in the development of the water resources of the country during that period through federal efforts.
Hoover Dam in Black Canyon was considered as "one of the most spectacular feats of engineering in the history of the world when completed in 1935" . The big dam was extremely important step ever taken to tame this wild river and put it to work to supply water for domestic use, irrigation and to generate electric energy. Marc Rainser commented, "Hoover Dam, as a showcase, contributed a great deal to the renewal of people’s confidence in the depression years of 1930’s".
The establishment of the dam showed that the Americans could control nature in a powerful new way with the help of advanced technology. The dam was conceived as a massive and complex machine created by American industrial invention to conquer the surrounding arid landscape and to create an urban civilization, an agribusiness empire. This modern miracle was a culture power representing a new thought, which focused on means or effective instrument instead of the ultimate end and value. It was with this impressive and divine-like power that other dams included in the Boulder Canyon Project were built with the justification that such public works would help stimulate the economy.
Davis Dam was built in 1953 for re-regulating Hoover Dam releases to meet downstream needs. It was followed by Morelos Dam, Palo Verde Diversion Dam and Headgate Rock Diversion Dam, "all built to serve the purpose of diverting water for agriculture purposes in Mexico, Southern California and Southern Arizona" . This furious dam building culminated in the authorization of the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) in 1956. Thus, in the upper basin CRSP led to a series of dams-Blue Mesa, Crystal and Morrow Point dams in Colorado, Flaming Gorge Dam in Utah, Navajo Dam in New Mexico. The list appears endless, "all of them echoing a lost, colorful frontier past, all of them in fact denoting a technological sameness and emerging industrial era" . Glen Canyon Dam, the last big dam built under CRSP in the Colorado River Basin, was the largest and key structure in controlling water releases to the lower basin. ONCLUSIOn
(The American 45~46).Just as Puritans celebrated westward expansion as one of their greatest achievements, millions of Americans felt proud of their water engineering in the West for the visible reason that they transformed desert lands and made them agriculturally productive. Those dams represented man’s effective domination of nature with the help of advanced weapons and tool.
Ⅲ. The Rise of Anti-Dam Movement in the West
Between 1940 and 1950, the New Deal’s environmental legacies were significant as much as problematic. In 1940 the Bureau of Reclamation had many western dams in its planning docket, “but for the most part, ignorance and indifference to the adverse environmental impacts has accompanied their construction.Its agricultural programs and dam-building projects propped up western agricultural economies while sacrificing prairie landscapes across the West. Most importantly, this new-found preservation movement, largely sparked by the protests against several major dam projects, emerged as one of the most important new social and political movements to survive the 1960s and has taken root as an essential part of American life thereafter.
The event which launched the modern environmental movement was the battle between the economic interests and protectionist groups led by the Sierra Club. This time, the dams were not just named after the West’s most storied rivers, but would be built in some of its most stupendous canyon landscapes under protection. The hot issue was the division of precious Colorado River water between the states situated in the Colorado River Basin through the Bureau of Reclamation’s billion-dollar Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP). "Among the planned 10 dams were several that inflamed the environmental community to launch a protracted battle that lasted 15 years, from 1950 to 1965" . At issue in the beginning was the Bureau’s decision to build a dam on the Green River at Echo Park that would have backed reservoir waters into Dinosaur National Monument’s Yampa River Canyon. The Echo Park controversy was regarded as a "test case" in that it highlighted the conflict of two values-conquering and protecting the wilderness. Given the tragic experience of Hetch Hetchy, the protectionists led by David Brower, then executive of the Sierra Club, vowed to defend the wilderness with all their efforts. Then owing to the pressure from the protectionists and the public, the government endorsed a version of the Project without the controversial dams. As a result, the protectionists won a great victory in wilderness protection through successfully stopping a dam on the Green River.
Equally important was the determination of the resistance to water development in the case of Dinosaur Monument. The protectionists prepared themselves for a larger battle by pooling their efforts in several lobbying agencies, such as the Emergency Committee on National Resources and the Council of Conservationists. Meanwhile, the philosophy of ecological significance and land ethic was applied to the fight against the dam. Protectionists argued that Dinosaur was important both as an exhibit of normal ecological process and as a gesture of human respect for the biotic community of life. In the battle an increasing number of Americans became convinced of the importance of the wilderness in modern civilization. More importantly, the protection movement began carrying more weight with the government decision thanks to "the wider public support and the improvement in their skill as political fighters.
In fact, the successful passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964 was to a large degree stimulated by the Dinosaur case. Determining to capitalize on the momentum of the triumph of the Echo Park decision, leading protectionists pressed for a more positive and systematic wilderness protection. Deeply influenced by the land ethic of Leopold, the ecological concerns were recognized in the Act content that "a wilderness may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value" . Realizing that modern industries were causing them with more and more damage to their environment, American citizens began to adopt cautious and positive attitudes toward their natural environment. As a result, during November 1958, 1,003 letters were received in the Senate hearings conducted in Oregon, California, Utah, and New Mexico. With the passage of the Act, the federal government formally expressed their intent to keep the wild portion of its land permanently wild. However, there existed discrepancy between the original proposal and the final act.