In the years following World War II, the world's biggest dam was
almost built in Hells Canyon on the Snake River in Idaho. Karl Boyd
Brooks tells the story of the dam controversy, which became a
referendum not only on public-power expansion but also on the
environmental implications of the New Deal's natural resources and
economic policy.
Private-power critics of the Hells Canyon High Dam posed
difficult questions about the implications of damming rivers to
create power and to grow crops. Activists, attorneys, and
scientists pioneered legal tactics and political rhetoric that
would help to define the environmental movement in the 1960s. The
debate, however, was less about endangered salmon or threatened
wild country and more about who would control land and water and
whether state enterprise or private capital would oversee the
supply of electricity.
By thwarting the dam's construction, Snake Basin irrigators
retained control over water as well as economic and political power
in Idaho, putting the state on a postwar path that diverged
markedly from that of bordering states. In the end, the opponents
of the dam were responsible for preserving high deserts and
mountain rivers from radical change.
With "Public Power, Private Dams," Karl Brooks makes an
important contribution not only to the history of the Pacific
Northwest and the region's anadromous fisheries but also to the
environmental history of the United States in the period after
World War II.
Karl Boyd Brooks is associate professor of history and
environmental studies at the University of Kansas.
""Public Power, Private Dams" provides a thorough discussion of
the controversies surrounding the Hells Canyon High Dam, with a
detailed examination of the regional and national forces that
struggled over the dam, how their differing visions of the future
were embodied in developmental alternatives, and how the region's
salmon runs and tribes and fishers were the big losers." --Dale
Goble, University of Idaho
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