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Book Review
| Rivers by Design: State Power and the Origins of U.S. Flood Control. Karen M. O'Neill. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. xxi + 278 pp. Tables, maps, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $79.95, paper $22.95.
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| Sociologist Karen M. O'Neill recognizes that the growth of the federal flood control program influenced and mirrored both the nature of American federalism and the character of the nation's democratic process. Her objective in Rivers by Design is to explore this evolution by examining local and state governments and the elites—farmers, merchants, bankers, and others—who, she argues, decisively shaped the federal flood control program. In a generally well-written narrative, O'Neill focuses on the Lower Mississippi and Sacramento valleys, the two areas that first benefited from federal flood control largesse. In so doing, she illuminates the tactics and rhetoric of advocacy groups that spared no effort to bring flood control to the attention of the nation. |
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Unfortunately, a number of shortcomings undermine the author's effort. One problem is reliance on a small number of works. The bibliography ignores numerous important secondary sources, and the endnotes reveal O'Neill's heavy dependence on just a dozen or so authors such as Robert Kelley, Todd Shallat, and John Barry. Primary sources are a few newspapers, government documents, and the printed proceedings of certain lobbying organizations. No archival research is evident. Consequently, the author faces a fundamental dilemma: How can one assess the growing national influence of flood control elites and advocacy groups by referring principally to their own self-aggrandizing literature? O'Neill emphasizes that her book is "neither a history of legislative power politics nor a history of the Army Corps of Engineers flood control program" (p. xiv). Fair enough, but politicians respond to all kinds of pressures, and only an examination of their personal papers and official correspondence allows an accurate assessment of their responsiveness to—or control of—local and regional institutions and groups. Abundant archival material exists. In many cases, it might well be that decisions reflect more internal legislative log-rolling than the power of interest groups. |
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The book also contains numerous historical inaccuracies. Gibbons v. Ogden did not hold the government "responsible" for free access to rivers, but forbade state interference with competition across state lines and confirmed, but did not clarify, congressional authority over interstate commerce. The General Survey Act did not authorize river surveys but quite explicitly only surveys of roads and canals. Levee districts were not established in the 1830s and 1840s, but only after the Swampland Acts were passed in the mid-nineteenth century. The name of California's well-known nineteenth-century state engineer was William Hammond Hall, not William Hamilton Hall. The name of the co-author of the Mississippi Delta Survey (1861) was Henry Larcom Abbot, not Edwin Hale Abbot. T. G. Dabney was not a Corps of Engineers officer. "Flood plane" should be "flood plain" and does not refer to river level but to the land periodically flooded by the river. The courts decided what a navigable river was, not the chief of engineers. The flood control program did not shift levee maintenance to the government. Other inaccuracies abound. |
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The interpretation raises other problems. The author mistakenly asserts that the "acceleration of market-oriented agriculture and forestry" was an unintended consequence of grants made pursuant to the Swampland Acts (p. 49). In fact, economic development through land reclamation provided a fundamental rationale for the entire program. Levee construction was only a means to that end. It is also difficult to understand the author's statement that the lower Mississippi and Sacramento valleys shared the same property laws when Louisiana's property laws reflected the Napoleonic Code. She misreads the 1917 Flood Control Act when she concludes that it "decisively established federal government responsibility to protect lands adjacent to navigable waters" (p. 126). Elsewhere, O'Neill argues that the 1936 Flood Control Act, which stated that flood control was "a proper activity of the Federal Government," all but doomed comprehensive federal water resource planning. This somewhat hyperbolic assessment—comprehensive river basin planning continues to attract attention and occasionally has even met success—will hardly surprise flood control historians or policy makers. The act may have "solidified" Corps authority in flood control (p. 166); it certainly solidified Congress's authority, and the Corps continues to face the problem of reconciling the federal interest, as defined by Congress and the executive branch, with local desires. Modifications in the Lower Mississippi River flood control plan (authorized in separate legislation apart from the 1936 Flood Control Act) resulted as much from technological developments and Corps recommendations as from pressure from flood control lobbyists, who often disagreed among themselves. In sum, the author's analysis suffers from a variety of deficiencies. The book must be read with caution by scholars and is problematical for classroom use. |
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Finally, a word must be said about the manner in which Duke University Press published this book. The book contains endnotes, but the endnotes contain neither page nor volume numbers, making it very difficult to verify information. The incomplete citations undermine the credibility of the book and the reputation of the press, and they do a disservice to both the author and the reader. Scholarly books require scholarly apparatus. |
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Martin Reuss recently retired from his position as senior historian, Water Resources, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and is the author of numerous articles and books on the evolution of water resources programs and policies in the United States. He is completing a history of hydrology in the United States, and co-editing (with Stephen Cutcliffe) a volume for the University of Virginia Press on the intersection of environmental and technological history. |
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