Download or read book Big Dams of the New Deal Era written by David P. Billington and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-04-20 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The massive dams of the American West were designed to serve multiple purposes: improving navigation, irrigating crops, storing water, controlling floods, and generating hydroelectricity. Their construction also put thousands of people to work during the Great Depression. Only later did the dams’ baneful effects on river ecologies spark public debate. Big Dams of the New Deal Era tells how major water-storage structures were erected in four western river basins. David P. Billington and Donald C. Jackson reveal how engineering science, regional and national politics, perceived public needs, and a river’s natural features intertwined to create distinctive dams within each region. In particular, the authors describe how two federal agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, became key players in the creation of these important public works. By illuminating the mathematical analysis that supported large-scale dam construction, the authors also describe how and why engineers in the 1930s most often opted for massive gravity dams, whose design required enormous quantities of concrete or earth-rock fill for stability. Richly illustrated, Big Dams of the New Deal Era offers a compelling account of how major dams in the New Deal era restructured the landscape—both politically and physically—and why American society in the 1930s embraced them wholeheartedly.

Download or read book The History of Large Federal Dams written by David P. Billington and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2005-10 with total page 630 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the story of Federal contributions to dam planning, design, and construction.

Download or read book Design of Small Dams written by United States. Bureau of Reclamation and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 860 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Dams and Public Safety written by Robert B. Jansen and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Great American Bridges and Dams written by Donald Conrad Jackson and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bridges and dams are key symbols of civic development, says Jackson and for this reason these two seemingly diverse types of structures have been combined in this book. The descriptions of many of the sites listed here go beyond simple data related to their dates and dimensions. The bridges and dams have been placed in historical contexts that illuminate their technological origins, the nature of their operation or their role in the local region's socioeconomic development. These analyses are designed to demonstrate the significance of these structres in America's history. ISBN 0-89133-129-8 (pbk.): $16.95 (For use only in the library).

Download or read book Concrete Revolution written by Christopher Sneddon and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water may seem innocuous, but as a universal necessity, it inevitably intersects with politics when it comes to acquisition, control, and associated technologies. While we know a great deal about the socioecological costs and benefits of modern dams, we know far less about their political origins and ramifications. In Concrete Revolution, Christopher Sneddon offers a corrective: a compelling historical account of the US Bureau of Reclamation’s contributions to dam technology, Cold War politics, and the social and environmental adversity perpetuated by the US government in its pursuit of economic growth and geopolitical power. Founded in 1902, the Bureau became enmeshed in the US State Department’s push for geopolitical power following World War II, a response to the Soviet Union’s increasing global sway. By offering technical and water resource management advice to the world’s underdeveloped regions, the Bureau found that it could not only provide them with economic assistance and the United States with investment opportunities, but also forge alliances and shore up a country’s global standing in the face of burgeoning communist influence. Drawing on a number of international case studies—from the Bureau’s early forays into overseas development and the launch of its Foreign Activities Office in 1950 to the Blue Nile investigation in Ethiopia—Concrete Revolution offers insights into this historic damming boom, with vital implications for the present. If, Sneddon argues, we can understand dams as both technical and political objects rather than instruments of impartial science, we can better participate in current debates about large dams and river basin planning.

Download or read book Dam Politics written by William Robert Lowry and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The politics of building dams and levees and other structures are just part of the policies determining how American rivers are managed or mismanaged. America's well-being depends upon the health of those rivers and important decisions go beyond just dam-building or dam removal. American rivers are suffering from poor water quality, altered flows, and diminished natural habitat. Current efforts by policymakers to change the ways American rivers are managed range from the removal of dams to the simulation of seasonal flows to the restoration of habitat, all with varying degrees of success. Efforts to restore American rivers are clearly delineated by William Lowry in Dam Politics as he looks at how public policy and rivers interact, examines the physical differences in rivers that affect policies, and analyzes the political differences among the groups that use them. He argues that we are indeed moving into an era of restoration (defined in part as removing dams but also as restoring the water quality, seasonal flows, and natural habitat that existed before structural changes to the rivers), and seeks to understand the political circumstances that affect the degree of restoration. Lowry presents case studies of eight river restoration efforts, including dam removals on the Neuse and Kennebec rivers, simulation of seasonal flows on the Colorado river, and the failed attempt to restore salmon runs on the Snake river. He develops a typology of four different kinds of possible change--dependent on the parties involved and the physical complexity of the river--and then examines the cases using natural historical material along with dozens of interviews with key policymakers. Policy approaches such as conjunctive water management, adaptive management, alternative licensing processes, and water marketing are presented as possible ways of using our rivers more wisely. Dam Politics provides a useful and systematic account of how American waterways are managed and how current policies are changing. American rivers are literally the lifeblood of our nation. Lowry has written a lively and accessible book that makes it clear as a mountain stream that it matters deeply how those rivers are managed.

Download or read book Dams and Development written by Sanjeev Khagram and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Big dams built for irrigation, power, water supply, and other purposes were among the most potent symbols of economic development for much of the twentieth century. Of late they have become a lightning rod for challenges to this vision of development as something planned by elites with scant regard for environmental and social consequences—especially for the populations that are displaced as their homelands are flooded. In this book, Sanjeev Khagram traces changes in our ideas of what constitutes appropriate development through the shifting transnational dynamics of big dam construction. Khagram tells the story of a growing, but contentious, world society that features novel and increasingly efficacious norms of appropriate behavior in such areas as human rights and environmental protection. The transnational coalitions and networks led by nongovernmental groups that espouse such norms may seem weak in comparison with states, corporations, and such international agencies as the World Bank. Yet they became progressively more effective at altering the policies and practices of these historically more powerful actors and organizations from the 1970s on. Khagram develops these claims in a detailed ethnographic account of the transnational struggles around the Narmada River Valley Dam Projects in central India, a huge complex of thirty large and more than three thousand small dams. He offers further substantiation through a comparative historical analysis of the political economy of big dam projects in India, Brazil, South Africa, and China as well as by examining the changing behavior of international agencies and global companies. The author concludes with a discussion of the World Commission on Dams, an innovative attempt in the late 1990s to generate new norms among conflicting stakeholders.

Download or read book The Future of Large Dams written by Thayer Ted Scudder and published by Earthscan. This book was released on 2012 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Viewed by some as symbols of progress and by others as inherently flawed, large dams remain one of the most contentious development issues on Earth. Building on the work of the now defunct World Commission on Dams, Thayer Scudder wades into the debate with unprecedented authority.Employing the Commission's Seven Strategic priorities, Scudder charts the 'middle way' forward by examining the impacts of large dams on ecosystems, societies and political economies. He also analyses the structure of the decision-making process for water resource development and tackles the highly contentious issue of dam-induced resettlement, illuminated by a statistical analysis of 50 cases.

Download or read book The Croton Dams and Aqueduct written by Christopher R. Tompkins and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of rare photographs chronicles the construction of one of the largest masonry dams ever built. From the beginnings of the first Croton Dam, completed in 1842, and of the new dam, which was finished in 1907, up to the present day, The Croton Dams and Aqueduct provides a stunning portrait of the entire project and the region that it impacted: New York City and Westchester County. As early as the 1770s, New York considered creating waterworks and even proposed damming area rivers, including the Hudson. With disease and fires blamed on the lack of water, plans were created c. 1830 to dam the Croton River. By 1842, water from the first dam flowed into New York City from Yorktown. Built to provide enough water for "centuries," the first dam was obsolete by the 1880s. Exponential growth from immigration created the demand for more water, and New York built the New Croton Dam. The new dam not only provided clean water for New York's burgeoning population but also spawned a new community of immigrant workers in the once Anglo community of Westchester County.

Download or read book Deadbeat Dams written by Daniel P. Beard and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author Beard is the former Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and knows the inside story of the waste of taxpayer money. The Bureau is responsible for building and operating water projects across the West, such as Hoover, Glen Canyon and Grand Coulee Dams.

Download or read book Deep Water written by Jacques Leslie and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-05-15 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If the wars of the last century were fought over oil, the wars of this century will be fought over water." -Ismail Serageldin, The World Bank The giant dams of today are the modern Pyramids, colossally expensive edifices that generate monumental amounts of electricity, irrigated water, and environmental and social disaster. With Deep Water, Jacques Leslie offers a searching account of the current crisis over dams and the world's water. An emerging master of long-form reportage, Leslie makes the crisis vivid through the stories of three distinctive figures: Medha Patkar, an Indian activist who opposes a dam that will displace thousands of people in western India; Thayer Scudder, an American anthropologist who studies the effects of giant dams on the peoples of southern Africa; and Don Blackmore, an Australian water manager who struggles to reverse the effects of drought so as to allow Australia to continue its march to California-like prosperity. Taking the reader to the sites of controversial dams, Leslie shows why dams are at once the hope of developing nations and a blight on their people and landscape. Deep Water is an incisive, beautifully written, and deeply disquieting report on a conflict that threatens to divide the world in the coming years.

Download or read book River of Life Channel of Death written by Keith Petersen and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As hip and breathless as William Gibson, but spiced with dark humor and the horrible realisation that Noon knows of what he writes....Vurtis passionate, distinctive, demanding and enthralling--first-time novelist Noon has started with a bang."--The London Times.

Download or read book Pastoral and Monumental written by Donald Conrad Jackson and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Pastoral and Monumental, Donald C. Jackson chronicles America's longtime fascination with dams as represented on picture postcards from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Through over four hundred images, Jackson documents the remarkable transformation of dams and their significance to the environment and culture of America. Initially, dams were portrayed in pastoral settings on postcards that might jokingly proclaim them as “a dam pretty place.” But scenes of flood damage, dam collapses, and other disasters also captured people's attention. Later, images of New Deal projects, such as the Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, and Norris Dam, symbolized America's rise from the Great Depression through monumental public works and technological innovation. Jackson relates the practical applications of dams, describing their use in irrigation, navigation, flood control, hydroelectric power, milling, mining, and manufacturing. He chronicles changing construction techniques, from small timber mill dams to those more massive and more critical to a society dependent on instant access to electricity and potable water. Concurrent to the evolution of dam technology, Jackson recounts the rise of a postcard culture that was fueled by advances in printing, photography, lowered postal rates, and America's fascination with visual imagery. In 1910, almost one billion postcards were mailed through the U.S. Postal Service, and for a period of over fifty years, postcards featuring dams were “all the rage.” Whether displaying the charms of an old mill, the aftermath of a devastating flood, or the construction of a colossal gravity dam, these postcards were a testament to how people perceived dams as structures of both beauty and technological power.

Download or read book Development of Dam Engineering in the United States written by Eric B. Kollgaard and published by Pergamon. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 1072 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very Good,No Highlights or Markup,all pages are intact.

Download or read book Geotechnical Engineering of Dams written by Robin Fell and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2014-11-21 with total page 1374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive text on the geotechnical and geological aspects of the investigations for and the design and construction of new dams and the review and assessment of existing dams. The book provides dam engineers and geologists with a practical approach, and gives university students an insight into the subject of dam engineering. All phases of investigation, design and construction are covered, through to the preliminary and detailed design phases and ultimately the construction phase. This revised and expanded 2nd edition includes a lengthy new chapter on the assessment of the likelihood of failure of dams by internal erosion and piping.

Download or read book Big Dams and Other Dreams written by Donald E. Wolf and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the businesses and personalities responsible for the construction of the Hoover, Bonneville, and Grand Coulee dams