The Evolution of the 1936 Flood Control Act PDF Download

Author: Joseph L. Arnold
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Flood control
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Author: Karen M. O'Neill
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
ISBN: 9780822337607
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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The United States has one of the largest and costliest flood control systems in the world, even though only a small proportion of its land lies in floodplains. Rivers by Design traces the emergence of the mammoth U.S. flood management system, which is overseen by the federal government but implemented in conjunction with state governments and local contractors and levee districts. Karen M. O’Neill analyzes the social origins of the flood control program, showing how the system initially developed as a response to the demands of farmers and the business elite in outlying territories. The configuration of the current system continues to reflect decisions made in the nineteenth century and early twentieth. It favors economic development at the expense of environmental concerns. O’Neill focuses on the creation of flood control programs along the lower Mississippi River and the Sacramento River, the first two rivers to receive federal flood control aid. She describes how, in the early to mid-nineteenth century, planters, shippers, and merchants from both regions campaigned for federal assistance with flood control efforts. She explains how the federal government was slowly and reluctantly drawn into water management to the extent that, over time, nearly every river in the United States was reengineered. Her narrative culminates in the passage of the national Flood Control Act of 1936, which empowered the Army Corps of Engineers to build projects for all navigable rivers in conjunction with local authorities, effectively ending nationwide, comprehensive planning for the protection of water resources.

Author: Peter Hallward
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789601150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Long before a devastating earthquake hit in January 2010, Haiti was one of the most impoverished and oppressed countries in the world. However, in the late 1980s a remarkable popular mobilization known as Lavalas ("the flood") sought to liberate the island from decades of US-backed dictatorial rule. Damming the Flood analyzes how and why the Lavalas governments led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were overthrown, in 1991 and again in 2004, by the enemies of democracy in Haiti and abroad. The elaborate campaign to suppress Lavalas was perhaps the most successful act of imperial sabotage since the end of the Cold War. It has left the people of Haiti at the mercy of some of the most rapacious political and economic forces on the planet. Updated with a substantial new afterword that addresses the international response to the earthquake, Damming the Flood is both an invaluable account of recent Haitian history and an illuminating analysis of twenty-first-century imperialism.

Author: Jared Orsi
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520238508
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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An fascinating history of flood control efforts in Los Angeles from the 1870s to the present, showing how engineering has continually failed to contain nature. This book teaches us to think of cities as ecosystems.

Author: William Edward Leuchtenburg
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Flood control
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Timothy W. Kneeland
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501748548
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Hurricane Agnes struck the United States in June of 1972, just months before a pivotal election and at the dawn of the deindustrialization period across the Northeast. The response by local, state, and national officials had long-term consequences for all Americans. President Richard Nixon used the tragedy for political gain by delivering a generous relief package to the key states of New York and Pennsylvania in a bid to win over voters. After his landslide reelection in 1972, Nixon cut benefits for disaster victims and then passed legislation to push responsibility for disaster preparation and mitigation on to states and localities. The impact led to the rise of emergency management and inspired the development of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). With a particular focus on events in New York and Pennsylvania, Timothy W. Kneeland narrates how local, state, and federal authorities responded to the immediate crisis of Hurricane Agnes and managed the long-term recovery. The impact of Agnes was horrific, as the storm left 122 people dead, forced tens of thousands into homelessness, and caused billions of dollars in damage from Florida to New York. In its aftermath, local officials and leaders directed disaster relief funds to rebuild their shattered cities and reshaped future disaster policies. Playing Politics with Natural Disaster explains how the political decisions by local, state, and federal officials shaped state and national disaster policy and continues to influence emergency preparedness and response to this day.

Author: Rohan D'Souza
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199469130
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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This book explores the idea and practice of flood control and argues that this is a part of a political agenda, deeply implicated in the social, economic, and political calculations of capitalism in general and colonialism in particular. It argues for a comprehensive reconsideration of the debate on the colonial environmental watershed, its hydraulic legacy, and questions contemporary enthusiasm for flood control in post-independent India. The author argues that the British assembled and deployed the idea and practice of flood control in order to secure their presence in the Orissa Delta. It was principally a political project deeply implicated in the social, economic, and political calculations of capitalism in general and colonialism in particular. Through the function of flood control, colonial rule sought to organize systems of land revenue, institute capitalist private property, and shape the region's hydrology with physical infrastructure such as embankments, canal networks, and inevitably the Hirakud Dam. In seeking to dominate the delta's many rivers, colonial capitalism brought about an unprecedented ecological rupture by transforming the Orissa Delta from a flood-dependent agrarian regime to a flood-vulnerable landscape. This ecological rupture revealed the particularities of colonial capitalism in its relationships with the natural world.

Author: Sarah S. Elkind
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807869112
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Focusing on five Los Angeles environmental policy debates between 1920 and 1950, Sarah Elkind investigates how practices in American municipal government gave business groups political legitimacy at the local level as well as unanticipated influence over federal politics. Los Angeles's struggles with oil drilling, air pollution, flooding, and water and power supplies expose the clout business has had over government. Revealing the huge disparities between big business groups and individual community members in power, influence, and the ability to participate in policy debates, Elkind shows that business groups secured their political power by providing Los Angeles authorities with much-needed services, including studying emerging problems and framing public debates. As a result, government officials came to view business interests as the public interest. When federal agencies looked to local powerbrokers for project ideas and political support, local business interests influenced federal policy, too. Los Angeles, with its many environmental problems and its dependence upon the federal government, provides a distillation of national urban trends, Elkind argues, and is thus an ideal jumping-off point for understanding environmental politics and the power of business in the middle of the twentieth century.

Author: James Kelly
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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In an age of towering orators, Flood was one of the best, and he used his fabled oratorical prowess and acute political skills to extend both the agenda and the appeal of patriotism. He seemed destined for popular immortality until he accepted political office, although he triumphantly re-launched his career in the early 1780s.

Author: Robert Kelley
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520214285
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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"Of late historians have become increasingly interested in the vast re-ordering of the environment involved in the creation of America. Nowhere was this more true than in the Sacramento Valley where re-ordering edged into folly. Battling the Inland Sea is a powerful evocation of the losses and gains involved in battling the mighty Sacramento River. But more than this, it is an exploration of the national will as it sought to rearrange nature herself with such mixed results. Here is history dealing with the most elemental forces of land, water and engineering as they are shaped by public policy. Here is the profound drama of value and symbol which occurs when Americans come into conflict with forces over which they can exercise, as Robert Kelley shows, only the most transitory and pyrrhic victories."—Kevin Starr, author of the Americans and the California Dream "Robert Kelley's research into the origins of California's first great flood control system has already helped to inform the shaping of the state's water laws. Now he opens up the benefits of that work for the average reader in a wonderfully clear and engaging story that manages, among other things, to show that water development in the United States hasn't been just a matter of engineering but a cultural and intellectual achievement as well."—William Kahrl, author of Water and Power "A vividly written narrative of one of the major transformations of the physical world we inhabit. Robert Kelley draws upon his rich store of learning and insight to set the struggles over the Sacramento Valley into a broad context. His book contains important lessons for those who would understand the American economy, environment, politics, or culture."—Daniel W. Howe, author of The Political Culture of the American Whigs