BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DAM
From CHAPTER NINE:
The issue of dam safety came to the fore as part of the Progressive
movement of the early twentieth century, and it received increased public
attention after the collapse of the Austin Dam near Austin,
Pennsylvania, in 1911. The failure of this concrete gravity dam
resulted in seventy-seven deaths and prompted an outcry for protective
legislation; state regulation was considered to be a way to guard the
public from ignorant or unscrupulous dam builders. Any detrimental
effect that bureaucrats and their advisers might have on innovative yet
sound design work went unacknowledged.
The men who controlled
municipal engineering organizations in Los Angeles and San Francisco
considered it professionally demeaning to have to submit their dam
designs to the state engineer for review and approval. Consequently,
they lobbied the state legislature to exclude them from the 1917 law.
M. M. O'Shaughnessy, San Francisco's city engineer between 1912 and
1932, later wrote: "I had our City Attorney present objections to the
State legislative body in Sacramento in 197, against allowing Mr.
McClure to have anything to do with our dams at Hetch Hetchy."
O'Shaughnessy claimed that he took this position because "I did not
think from [McClure's] previous experience and knowledge, [that] he had
the requisite experience to pass on such a subject and I did not care to
be subject to his capricious rulings."
While other engineers and
water
user organizations may have possessed similar skepticism concerning the
state engineer -- to say nothing of their interest in autonomy, regardless
of the state official's competence -- they lacked the political clout
necessary to exempt themselves from the new law.
* * * * * * * * * * *
In resisting efforts to approve multiple arch dams that extended higher
than 150
feet, McClure acted (whether by design or not) to ensure that sparsely
funded groups of water users would be constrained in their ability to
store water. This, in turn, encouraged less diffused (and hence more
centralized) control over the state's water resources. The reasons
enunciated in opposition to Eastwood's Littlerock design may have been
"technical," but in light of the structure's dramatically low
construction cost, they resonated with political and economic
significance.
Looking beyond official concerns about the safety
of the proposed design for Littlerock, historians should consider
whether McClure's opposition to it may have been influenced by larger
economic/political interests. Eastwood alluded to this in late 1918,
when he commented that unnamed people wanted to "knock out"the
irrigation districts. In 1920, he again addressed the political
dimensions of the problem when he wrote Chester Rowell, longtime editor
of the Fresno Republican, to express his feeling "that I can be of
great benefit to the cause of development in this state if I can have a
free field, and am not shut out before the race begins" and to request "a
letter of introduction to his Excellency, the Governor [William
Stephens]."
Available documents do not reveal any overt
acts of
collusion between McClure (or any of his engineering consultants) and
well-heeled financial interests to undermine Eastwood and/or the two
irrigation districts seeking to build the Littlerock Dam. But the record
is clear that Eastwood's designs engendered intense oposition for more
than three years and that the force of arguments offered by Huber,
Galloway, and other advisers to McClure during this time ultimately
evaporated without any compelling technical rationale. As such,
McClure's final design approval represented a political decision, not an
engineering judgement per se.
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