Download or read book Flood Control in Metropolitan Los Angeles written by Richard Bigger and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Control of Nature written by John McPhee and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While John McPhee was working on his previous book, Rising from the Plains, he happened to walk by the engineering building at the University of Wyoming, where words etched in limestone said: "Strive on--the control of Nature is won, not given." In the morning sunlight, that central phrase--"the control of nature"--seemed to sparkle with unintended ambiguity. Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces--heroic or venal, rash or well advised--when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya--the largest river swamp in North America--and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control. In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is. In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers. Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.
Download or read book Los Angeles River Flood Prevention Project written by Earl C. Ruby and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A history of the Los Angeles District U S Army Corps of Engineers 1898 1965 written by Anthony F. Turhollow and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Geological Survey Water supply Paper written by and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 2132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Water supply Paper written by and published by . This book was released on 1947 with total page 686 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Water and Los Angeles written by William Deverell and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Los Angeles rose to significance in the first half of the twentieth century by way of its complex relationship to three rivers: the Los Angeles, the Owens, and the Colorado. The remarkable urban and suburban trajectory of southern California since then cannot be fully understood without reference to the ways in which each of these three river systems came to be connected to the future of the metropolitan region. This history of growth must be understood in full consideration of all three rivers and the challenges and opportunities they presented to those who would come to make Los Angeles a global power. Full of primary sources and original documents, Water and Los Angeles will be of interest to both students of Los Angeles and general readers interested in the origins of the city.
Download or read book The Los Angeles River written by Blake Gumprecht and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2001-04-30 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the J. B. Jackson Prize from the Association of American Geographers Three centuries ago, the Los Angeles River meandered through marshes and forests of willow and sycamore. Trout spawned in its waters and grizzly bears roamed its shores. The bountiful environment the river helped create supported one of the largest concentrations of Indians in North America. Today, the river is made almost entirely of concrete. Chain-link fence and barbed wire line its course. Shopping carts and trash litter its channel. Little water flows in the river most of the year, and nearly all that does is treated sewage and oily street runoff. On much of its course, the river looks more like a deserted freeway than a river. The river's contemporary image belies its former character and its importance to the development of Southern California. Los Angeles would not exist were it not for the river, and the river was crucial to its growth. Recognizing its past and future potential, a potent movement has developed to revitalize its course. The Los Angeles River offers the first comprehensive account of a river that helped give birth to one of the world's great cities, significantly shaped its history, and promises to play a key role in its future.
Download or read book The Great Thirst written by Norris Hundley and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001-07-02 with total page 826 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of "the great thirst" is brought up to date in this revised edition of Norris Hundley's outstanding history, with additional photographs and incisive descriptions of the major water-policy issues facing California now: accelerating urbanization of farmland and open spaces, persisting despoliation of water supplies, and demands for equity in water allocation for an exploding population. People the world over confront these problems, and Hundley examines them with clarity and eloquence in the unruly laboratory of California. The obsession with water has shaped California to a remarkable extent, literally as well as politically and culturally. Hundley tells how aboriginal Americans and then early Spanish and Mexican immigrants contrived to use and share the available water and how American settlers, arriving in ever-increasing numbers after the Gold Rush, transformed California into the home of the nation's preeminent water seekers. The desire to use, profit from, manipulate, and control water drives the people and events in this fascinating narrative until, by the end of the twentieth century, a large, colorful cast of characters and communities has wheeled and dealed, built, diverted, and connived its way to an entirely different statewide waterscape.
Download or read book The Journal of the Senate During the Session of the Legislature of the State of California written by California. Legislature. Senate and published by . This book was released on 1933 with total page 2262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Southwest Builder and Contractor written by and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Selected Bibliography of Southern California Maps written by Edward L. Chapin Jr. and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Biennial Report of the Division of Engineering and Irrigation written by California. Division of Engineering and Irrigation and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Civil Functions Department of the Army Appropriations 1952 Hearings Before 82 1 written by United States. Congress. Senate. Appropriations Committee and published by . This book was released on 1951 with total page 1678 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rules of the Civil Service Commission written by Cincinnati (Ohio). Civil Service Commission and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hearings written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 1880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A History of the Los Angeles District U S Army Corps of Engineers 1898 1965 written by United States Engineers Corps and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
