Myths of Power
How the Sierra Club Ruled and Ruined...or Couldnt
A rich story like the one telling how the Grand Canyon was kept free of giant hydroelectric dams is bound to spin out exaggerations, tall tales, boastings, legends, and myths. And somewhere in the verbiage, maybe truths are to be found. I have tried to search out some truths in other posts of this blog, but here I want to indulge myself taking a swing at some of the fantastical inventions. As a participant in the 1966-8 climax of that story, I find two myths -- like zombies ever popping up -- particularly obnoxious. Obnoxious, and when taken together, puzzlingly contradictory.
The anti-dam effort gained its strength because the Grand Canyon, as a nationally known wonder, attracted defenders, organizations and individuals, and news outlets, all across America. [Sidebar: Could this be a myth, too, that there existed a nation-wide protective instinct for this out-size gully? Is there a study to be done of the reach and density of Canyon defenders?]
However, unlike the big anti-dam fight of the early 1950's (over Echo Park in Dinosaur National Monument), powered by a coalition, in the 1960's one organization seemingly attracted the lightning of public attention and pro-dammers' loathing: the Sierra Club. As the Club's Southwest Representative at the time, I was aware of others: Audubon, the Wilderness Society; regional groups in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah. Maybe it was just easiest for the dam backers to try to demonize and isolate one noisy group trying to attract attention for the Canyon. Writing the history of the rise of what is now called the environmental movement, I should think tracking down such groups, and determining how broad and lasting their impact was, would be especially important, given how national environmentalism became.
The two myths, and their correctives:
Myth 1.
David Brower and the Sierra Club, striding the world like Colossus, brought about the development, construction, and operation of multiple Southwest smoke-and-ash-spewing coal-fired power plants because the Club opposed dams that produced clean energy. The resultant smog made viewing the Grand Canyon problematic.
The truth?
The exploitation of the Southwest's coal deposits, from Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, for the production of electricity in mine-mouth or transport-served power generating plants was already well-advanced and widely planned for in the 1960's.
Yes, opponents of the dams did insist that there were alternatives* to the dams in energy-generating methods that had their own drawbacks. However, the Reclamation/Interior/Udall solution to the question of how to make the dams unnecessary lay, not in the government building coal-fired plants, but in using its financial prowess to pay in advance for the power needed by the water project. The formidably polluting plant near Glen Canyon Dam became the physical marker for this ingenious financing scheme, called prepayment, that saved the Central Arizona water legislation from being stalled through another Congress, and perhaps forever.
Myth 2.
The Sierra Club was too weak to save the Grand Canyon. David Brower & his Club, honking and squeaking like demented clowns, grabbed the attention of the liberal media, distracting their attention away from the serious analysis and understanding of the Colorado Basin's problems. As a result, the misinformed newshounds failed to see the Colossus of the Northwest, Senator Henry Jackson, forcing water-starved Arizonans to their knees until they gave up their beloved clean-energy, water-conserving dams buried way out of sight in obscure corners of what the pygmy publicists in the Sierra Club mistakenly called the Grand Canyon. Had Jackson's diktat to drop the dams been defied, the put-upon Arizonans would have been unable to secure essential Colorado water for their survival. The Club and its mouthpieces then claimed credit for "saving" the Grand Canyon, wherever that was.
The truth?
Senator Jackson, his fellow Northwest legislators, were in a tight, if unpublicized, alliance with the Sierra Club, and rode on the swell of public opinion stimulated by conservationist publicity against damming the Grand Canyon. At key moments, Jackson used his unmatchable legislative position and working relationships, including with Hayden of Arizona and Secretary of the Interior Udall and other key power brokers, to keep out of the Colorado Basin Act any items that might have helped or favored the idea of importing water out of the Columbia Basin into the Colorado River system. One such item was the scheme to direct revenues from the Grand Canyon dams into accounts to finance water import. Analysis, by the Sierra Club and others, of the dams had shown conclusively that their profits were not needed either to provide or to pump water for Central Arizona, or to pay for the C.A. aqueduct. On the contrary, the dam revenues, as Udall later testified, were a down-payment on the Columbia.
The claim that Udall dropped the dams only because of Jackson's opposition is undermined because had Udall, and Hayden, wanted only to pacify Jackson, they could have included in the legislation provisions that the dam revenues could be used solely to help the Colorado Basin projects, and otherwise had to go to the U.S.Treasury. That is, one or two dams could have been left in to help Arizona as per Reclamation "tradition", but their revenues would be barred from being used to study or finance water imports.
This compromise was adopted as far as studies of water import went at Jackson's insistence. However, it would not work for the dams, because the combination of conservationist publicity and Northwestern legislative power would have kept the legislation in trouble. Udall certainly wanted to use Jackson as cover for his damless alternatives, but those alternatives were also the only way the bill could move smoothly in the Senate without continuing anti-dam clamor, and the only way Udall could regain some credibility (for himself and for the Johnson Administration) as the author of his conservationist views in The Quiet Crisis and the friend of what would soon be called environmentalism.
=======================
*See my November 2016 posts on the conservationist use of the tactic of suggesting that alternatives existed -- widely used in efforts to protect valuable natural resources from single-minded exploitation.
For instance, I followed the mystery-story direction: To find the culprit, follow the money. In this case I showed how the dams' revenue was not necessary for Arizona projects, but was to be accumulated to raid the Northwest's water resources.
And a different mystery: Why are Arizonan writings so set on diminishing the 1960's role of the California-based Sierra Club and its then Executive Director, David Brower, in preventing dams from being built in the Grand Canyon? Did the pro-dammers' venom become the mix of choice in Arizonans' bourbon-and-branch, as Goldwater claimed in his famous joke about their lack of branch, i.e., water? They seem compelled to keep trying, in their many books, to rub off onto others the tarnish Arizona must bear for wanting to dam the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon!!!
The two myths, and their correctives:
Myth 1.
David Brower and the Sierra Club, striding the world like Colossus, brought about the development, construction, and operation of multiple Southwest smoke-and-ash-spewing coal-fired power plants because the Club opposed dams that produced clean energy. The resultant smog made viewing the Grand Canyon problematic.
The truth?
The exploitation of the Southwest's coal deposits, from Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, for the production of electricity in mine-mouth or transport-served power generating plants was already well-advanced and widely planned for in the 1960's.
Yes, opponents of the dams did insist that there were alternatives* to the dams in energy-generating methods that had their own drawbacks. However, the Reclamation/Interior/Udall solution to the question of how to make the dams unnecessary lay, not in the government building coal-fired plants, but in using its financial prowess to pay in advance for the power needed by the water project. The formidably polluting plant near Glen Canyon Dam became the physical marker for this ingenious financing scheme, called prepayment, that saved the Central Arizona water legislation from being stalled through another Congress, and perhaps forever.
Myth 2.
The Sierra Club was too weak to save the Grand Canyon. David Brower & his Club, honking and squeaking like demented clowns, grabbed the attention of the liberal media, distracting their attention away from the serious analysis and understanding of the Colorado Basin's problems. As a result, the misinformed newshounds failed to see the Colossus of the Northwest, Senator Henry Jackson, forcing water-starved Arizonans to their knees until they gave up their beloved clean-energy, water-conserving dams buried way out of sight in obscure corners of what the pygmy publicists in the Sierra Club mistakenly called the Grand Canyon. Had Jackson's diktat to drop the dams been defied, the put-upon Arizonans would have been unable to secure essential Colorado water for their survival. The Club and its mouthpieces then claimed credit for "saving" the Grand Canyon, wherever that was.
The truth?
Senator Jackson, his fellow Northwest legislators, were in a tight, if unpublicized, alliance with the Sierra Club, and rode on the swell of public opinion stimulated by conservationist publicity against damming the Grand Canyon. At key moments, Jackson used his unmatchable legislative position and working relationships, including with Hayden of Arizona and Secretary of the Interior Udall and other key power brokers, to keep out of the Colorado Basin Act any items that might have helped or favored the idea of importing water out of the Columbia Basin into the Colorado River system. One such item was the scheme to direct revenues from the Grand Canyon dams into accounts to finance water import. Analysis, by the Sierra Club and others, of the dams had shown conclusively that their profits were not needed either to provide or to pump water for Central Arizona, or to pay for the C.A. aqueduct. On the contrary, the dam revenues, as Udall later testified, were a down-payment on the Columbia.
The claim that Udall dropped the dams only because of Jackson's opposition is undermined because had Udall, and Hayden, wanted only to pacify Jackson, they could have included in the legislation provisions that the dam revenues could be used solely to help the Colorado Basin projects, and otherwise had to go to the U.S.Treasury. That is, one or two dams could have been left in to help Arizona as per Reclamation "tradition", but their revenues would be barred from being used to study or finance water imports.
This compromise was adopted as far as studies of water import went at Jackson's insistence. However, it would not work for the dams, because the combination of conservationist publicity and Northwestern legislative power would have kept the legislation in trouble. Udall certainly wanted to use Jackson as cover for his damless alternatives, but those alternatives were also the only way the bill could move smoothly in the Senate without continuing anti-dam clamor, and the only way Udall could regain some credibility (for himself and for the Johnson Administration) as the author of his conservationist views in The Quiet Crisis and the friend of what would soon be called environmentalism.
=======================
*See my November 2016 posts on the conservationist use of the tactic of suggesting that alternatives existed -- widely used in efforts to protect valuable natural resources from single-minded exploitation.
For instance, I followed the mystery-story direction: To find the culprit, follow the money. In this case I showed how the dams' revenue was not necessary for Arizona projects, but was to be accumulated to raid the Northwest's water resources.
And a different mystery: Why are Arizonan writings so set on diminishing the 1960's role of the California-based Sierra Club and its then Executive Director, David Brower, in preventing dams from being built in the Grand Canyon? Did the pro-dammers' venom become the mix of choice in Arizonans' bourbon-and-branch, as Goldwater claimed in his famous joke about their lack of branch, i.e., water? They seem compelled to keep trying, in their many books, to rub off onto others the tarnish Arizona must bear for wanting to dam the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon!!!
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