Hi all, Forwarded: Book review. Carol Tucson >X-Sent-Via: DakotaCom.NET >Delivered-To: [email protected] >X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 4.5 (0410) >Approved-By: Thomas & Pamela Wellock <[email protected]> >Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 08:09:06 -0800 >Reply-To: H-NET List on California Studies <[email protected]> >Sender: H-NET List on California Studies <[email protected]> >From: Thomas & Pamela Wellock <[email protected]> >Subject: California Water History: Boulder Dam and Pisani Review >To: [email protected] >X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-0.3 required=5.0 > tests=APPROVED_BY,AWL > version=2.55 >X-Spam-Level: >X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.55 (1.174.2.19-2003-05-19-exp) > >From: [email protected] >Subject: Re: California Water History: Boulder Dam and Pisani Review >Date: Thu, Jan 8, 2004, 10:31 AM > > Herein, A.E. Holland of New Mexico Univ., presents the second of two >reviews concerning these new volumes by Pisani, on Water development in the >West, under guidence of Federal authority and the Bureau of Reclamation, >thru its own history. Below are a couple of excerpted paragraphs, concerning >two key areas of this history, from the Holland review found on >H-California, in December of 2003: > >Donald J. Pisani. _Water and American Government: The Reclamation >Bureau,National Water Policy, and the West, 1902-1935_. Berkeley and >London: University of California Press, 2002. 415 pp. Preface, >acknowledgements, maps, notes, index. $49.95 (cloth) ISBN 0-520-23030-2. >Reviewed for H-California by Alfred E. Holland Jr. [email protected], History >Department, University of New Mexico > >"Success through Failure: Reclamation's Aims and Accomplishments In his >clearly titled _Water and American Government_ Donald J. Pisani continues >his planned multivolume analysis of water law, water policy, and American >governmental institutions.[1] This second volume offers a narrative history >of the Reclamation Service from its creation by theReclamation Act of 1902 >through its monumental, crowning achievement in the first third of the >twentieth century, Boulder Dam on the Colorado River. > >Pisani has written an institutional history of the Reclamation Service and >its successor the Bureau of Reclamation (1923) and the efforts by those >agencies to establish and implement a national water policy that would >attack social ills in the urban squalor of the East, construct the physical >apparatus to deliver water for irrigation, provide electricity for homes and >and industry, and extend flood protection. All the while Reclamation had to >survive and ultimately prevail in vigorous competition with the Department >of Agriculture's Office of Irrigation Investigations and the War >Department's Army Corps of Engineers for authority and funding. Pisani's is >a history wherein "agency" prevails as a noun meaning a formally >constituted government bureau rather than an awkward euphemism for >individual or collective "initiative," where "power" is measured in >standardized units including horsepower, kilowatts, votes, and dollars, >or is overtly wielded by government institutions and their constituencies >rather than secreted between the lines of text. _Water and American >Government_ narrates a nuanced history of the Bureau of Reclamation's early >life as it sought to formulate and to realize ideals relict from Thomas >Jefferson's yeoman farmer, Andrew Johnson's Homestead Act of 1862, and the >admiration of professional expertise characterizing the progressives at the >turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Pisani's history is its >most interesting and his contribution greatest where he skillfully places >Reclamation, an agency in the executive branch, and the several men who led >it, in the political and ideological crossfire between the Congress and the >Cabinet, the East and the West, the South and the North, principles of >public and private ownership of infrastructure assets, urban and rural >sectors of society, agricultural and industrial visions of the American >future, and, scientific and sentimental ideologies. Pisani argues "it makes >more sense to see the Reclamation Act of 1902 and the events that followed >as evidence of the persistence of 'frontier America' and traditional >nineteenth-century values, rather than as the emergence of 'modern >America'" or "as a symbol of ... the expansion and centralization of >national power over natural resources" (p. xi). "Persistence" is Pisani's >key word in his thesis. The laissez-faire principles of small, individualist >land owners; private or at most localized power and irrigation distribution >enterprises; and decentralized administration display remarkable tenacity >through the thirty-three years. Pisani discusses--a tenacity all the more >remarkable for the increasingly centralized administrative ideologies >ascendant during the first third of the twentieth century. Pisani >demonstrates in his ten chapters how the constraints of the American federal >system of government and its institutionalized processes of compromise >preserved the ideals of the "agricultural model of 1800 or 1850" (p. xi). >It is a study of practical politics and policy wherein the political parties >are often only incidentally party to the politics..........." > >Completely absorbing, just reading Holland's review here, is this >presentation in descriptive power and phrasing. Pisani's work, taken as >most accurately described, has certainly covered the substances of this >subject, as this comment attests, from my own experience and research work >done at UCLA in the 60's, mentioned previously, concerning the volume I >review. > >Prof. Holland has gotten this without the need for my own kudos. Pisani's >work, described, would certainly be masterful. Am only hopeful, not having >read the volumes to date as these reviews are inspirations to do so, Pisani >explored in more detail and depth than review allows, the Jeffersonian >heritage and concept which served as model and value for Bureau of >Reclamation championing small family farm policy and practice. These are >ideas and ideals not as well observed in an age of modern, large corporate >farming; whose own cosequences, include more recent history. > >Indeed, reading this review alone is like shaking hands with a old friend, >who has not been seen for many long years , yet remains vital in all aspects >and dimensions. In so saying, there is another dimension not so completely >commented upon by the review. This concerns the closing chapter, with the >Bureau entering that modern age door: > >"Gateway to the Hydraulic Age: Water Politics, 1920-1935," Pisani's ninth >chapter, argues "modern water politics was born in the 1920s" (p. 235). The >intra-cabinet rivalries between the departments of Agriculture, Interior, >and War triggered several cabinet reorganization proposals in the wake of >American experience with centralized planning practiced by several of its >wartime allies. Nearly thirty federal agencies had something to do with >public works. Competition rather than cooperation prevented integrated >planning and administration............ > ..........Pisani argues that as the "utility companies replaced the >railroads as the 'mother of trusts,'" public opinion came to accept federal >power generation at Boulder Dam, six times larger than all the capacity in >all earlier federal reclamation projects, in addition to the flood >protection for the Imperial Valley and the power to lift the waters of the >Colorado River Aqueduct over the San Gabriel mountains and into the >burgeoning Los Angeles Basin.The sectional compromises negotiated to support >the Boulder Dam Project allowed subsequent large dam projects, again >offering multiple uses for multiple constituencies, at Grand Coulee on the >Columbia River in Washington and the Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River in >northern California..........." > > Here, is the centerpiece for any work concerned with the modern era. >Holland and Pisani correctly state this importance of the Colorado River >project and Boulder Dam, which did represent the break with that past >oriented towards 19th and 18th Centuries; thru emergence in modern 20th >Century power and water management. It is interesting to note, historically, >West Coast settlement and migration patterns that prompted this orientation >and focus, were considerably smaller than the Megolopolis, 21st Century >California and West Coast life has brought; in very large part, due to this >exceptionally visionary Boulder Dam with its twin emphasis on power and >water. These twins have shouldered much to those burdens required for >building the West and California. It is not too far to argue, this success >was cornerstone in eventual development of California's water resources; >again, as noted in commentary about Sacramento devevelopment. But it was >Boulder Dam, its achievement, that gave life to the modern West and >continues to do so even today. > >Boulder, following the pattern of human migration, reached the West Coast >initially; only recent history, has seen "backfill" for land areas >previously passed, by both people and water from Boulder. These now stand >astride the California-Nevada border areas as Las Vegas and the Mojave >Desert. Both, shorted in water distribution arising from Boulder, have only >recently begun to make their claims upon this system, now some 80 years into >development. Lands, previously thought not important to include in >the Boulder system, have now become so. > > >It is this final and as yet still unfolding focus, that comprises broader >dimensions to this volume's final chapter; perhaps, starting point for >another? That history would describe, just as completely, this modern era of >power and water history for California and the West, as well as the still >important Bureau of Reclamation and its contributions to the nations' values >and ways of life. > > Wyatt Reader > (UCLA-Whittier College) > Instructor-California Community Colleges/private Carol De Priest <mailto:[email protected]> Honest Intellectual Inquiry <http://www.dakotacom.net/~depriest>