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Rivers by Design: State Power and the Origins of U.S. Flood Control

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Description

The United States has one of the vital largest and costliest flood Keep watch over systems on the earth, despite the fact that 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 together with state governments and local contractors and levee districts. Karen M. O’Neill analyzes the social origins of the flood Keep watch over program, showing how the system to begin with 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 specializes in the creation of flood Keep watch over programs along the lower Mississippi River and the Sacramento River, the first two rivers to receive federal flood Keep watch over aid. She describes how, in the early to mid-nineteenth century, planters, shippers, and merchants from both regions campaigned for federal assistance with flood Keep watch over efforts. She explains how the federal government used to be slowly and reluctantly drawn into water management to the extent that, through the years, nearly every river in the US used to be reengineered. Her narrative culminates in the passage of the national Flood Keep watch over Act of 1936, which empowered the Army Corps of Engineers to build projects for all navigable rivers together with local authorities, effectively ending nationwide, comprehensive planning for the protection of water resources.

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