86 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
86 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
California State University Monterey Bay
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SBS 385 *Environmental History of California*
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***California: A History* (Starr 2005)**
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**Chapter 7: Great Expectations: Creating the Infrastructure of a
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Mega-State**
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**In the second forty years as a state, the public works infrastructure
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of California was established**. The **dams, aqueducts, reservoirs,
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power plants, industrial sites, bridges, roadways, public buildings**,
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and stadiums served a growing population. They also foretold and
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empowered the mega-state to come.
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**It began with water**, the sine qua non of any civilization. Two
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thirds of the annual precipitation falls in the northern third of the
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state, much of Southern California is desert terrain, despite two great
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rivers, the Sacramento and San Joaquin, the Great Central Valley is
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itself a semiarid steppe, with soil baked by the sun to such hardness
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that it frequently had to be broken with dynamite. For California to
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become inhabitable and productive in its entirety would require a
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statewide water system of heroic magnitude.
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In 1878 the legislature passed the Drainage Act and appropriated funds
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for irrigation, drainage, and navigation studies. These studies put
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California into the historical context of irrigated civilizations of
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ancient and modern times.
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The **Wright Act of 1887** empowered local communities to form
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**irrigation districts** to divert river water to dry lands for
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irrigation and/or flood control, thus establishing the legal and
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political framework to bring water to previously arid land, and, in
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short order, **transform the Central Valley and portions of Southern
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California into an agricultural empire**.
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Developers were really **selling not so much land as water**. The
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Imperial Valley was promoted as the Egyptian delta of the United States
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with the Colorado River serving as its Nile. Promoters advanced **a
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biblical scenario** with Americans being called by the Lord to a life of
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missionary improvement. Irrigation, however, was a reorganization of
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nature, and all such reorderings have their risks.
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The **technology developed** in the Gold Rush for moving water across
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land led to the technology of irrigation, which would enlarge and
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stabilize the metropolitan infrastructure of San Francisco and Los
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Angeles. By 1900, 40% of the 1.5 million population lived either in the
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Bay Area or Greater Los Angeles, and each city knew it would need more
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water to serve its present population and support desired growth. Each
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city established an administrative board to develop water plans and
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programs, and each city pushed a major water project to a successful
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conclusion by tapping, in each case, a river – the **Owens for Los
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Angeles**, the **Tuolumne for San Francisco** – and bringing its water
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to the city through a system of dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts that
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took years to construct.
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The **water and hydroelectricity** thus obtained enabled each city to
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serve as many as 4 million residents, and in each instance, the water
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system involved almost equally monumental damage to the environment. In
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the case of San Francisco, the loss of the magnificent Hetch Hetchy
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Valley near Yosemite when the Tuolumne River was dammed and the valley
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was filled to create a reservoir, and in the case of Los Angeles, the
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desiccation and devastation of the once-fertile Owens Valley when the
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Owens River was siphoned off to Los Angeles. Each project, moreover, was
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plagued by claims of deception, double-dealing, and conflict of interest
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that became the subject of many histories, novels, and films, including
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the Oscar-winning *Chinatown*, in the decades ahead.
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It was easy to make a living in this **booming economy**. The
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construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct kept thousands employed,
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agriculture and related activities (packing, shipping, canning, food
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processing), transportation and shipping, the forth busiest port in the
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nation, home building constant across three decades supported building
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trades (carpenters, plumbers, painters, landscapers), the oil industry,
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automobiles, the hotel and tourist industry, aviation and motion
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pictures, fishing industry, military bases, and numerous colleges and
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universities.
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The **Great Depression** of the 1930s witnessed the continuing creation
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of a statewide infrastructure as the state and federal governments
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sponsored ambitious programs of **public works** that, in effect,
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completed California: Hoover Dam (1935); **Central Valley Project** and
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associated dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts; **defense**
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**manufacturing**; state and county **roadways**; San Francisco-Oakland
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**Bay Bridge** (1936); and **Golden Gate Bridge** (1937).
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