|
|
|
Book Review
| The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism. By Robert Righter. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. illus, notes, index, xxiii-303. $30.
|
| The Hetch Hetchy dam controversy stands as perhaps the most well-known legal and political contest in American environmental history. From the outset, environmental historiography framed the events surrounding the construction of O'Shaughnessy Dam in terms generally set forth by John Muir, Robert Underwood Johnson, and other proponents of what has come to be labeled the preservationist camp of the American conservation movement. Typically, the events themselves have served historians as a backdrop for discussion of other issues, most notably the fracturing of the conservation movement into resource-management and nature-preservation factions, or the precursor to the aggressive wilderness preservation advocacy of the mid-twentieth-century environmental movement. In this role, Hetch Hetchy has served environmental historians as both myth and symbol. Robert Righter takes a closer look at the debate surrounding the proposal to dam the valley, the actions of political activists on several sides of the issue, the actual construction of the dam, and the problems created by the Progressives' notions of how the Hetch Hetchy system should best be utilized. In so doing, Righter pierces the mythic shell encapsulating this tale, and revealed it for the complex story it is, a story that defies the easy black hat/white hat dichotomy of an earlier era. |
1
|
|
Righter suggests that Hetch Hetchy "represents the seminal battle not over wilderness, but over public power" in the context of Progressive Era democratic reforms (p. 6). He offers ample evidence that the debate revolved more around who controlled San Francisco's water supply than it did around the inviolability of Yosemite National Park. He further argued that rather than wanting to preserve wilderness, those opposed to the dam were, in fact, advocates of tourism. Righter portrays most of his politically active subjects as self-interested, stubborn, and narrow-minded, though well-intentioned, individuals motivated by competing personal and social interests, each hoping Hetch Hetchy could serve their ideals. |
2
|
|
Typically, environmental historians drop the story at the completion of the dam, or in 1913 with the signing of the Raker Act. After all, the developer/preservationist struggle over the real Hetch Hetchy Valley ends there in short-term preservationist defeat. Instead, Righter continues with an account of the entanglements created by compromises made by San Francisco politicians in their single-minded rush to claim and use Hetch Hetchy water. His account of the ongoing conflict between San Francisco and the federal government illuminates another under-analyzed aspect of political environmental history. |
3
|
|
Righter shows people at work in this solid political history. However, he too often shies away from entering the minds of his subjects and plumbing the depth of their motivations. Those who expect a history of ideas and motivating forces in connection to the birth of environmentalism, or a revisionist social critique of water and power, need go elsewhere. Righter's account demythologizes and expands our understanding of Hetch Hetchy politics and the ways in which they may contribute to modern environmental politics. |
4
|
|
Dennis Williams, author of God's Wilds: John Muir's Vision of Nature (Texas A&M, 2002), is professor of history and geography at Southern Nazarene University and a founding editor of H-Environment. |
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|