F. E. Dominy, Who Harnessed Water in the American West, Is Dead at 100
Floyd E. Dominy, a child of the Dust Bowl who pursued his dream of improving nature and human society by building vast water projects in the West — steamrolling over pristine canyons, doubtful politicians and irate conservationists — died on April 20 in Boyce, Va. He was 100.
His family announced the death.
Even before he became the longest-serving commissioner of the federal Bureau of Reclamation (1959 to 1969), Mr. Dominy, as a rising bureaucrat, showed a knack for persuading senators and representatives to push ahead with massive dams in the arid West.
Marc Reisner in his 1986 book, “Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water,” said Mr. Dominy cultivated Congress “as if he were tending prize-winning orchids.”
Mr. Reisner quoted an official in the Interior Department, of which the Reclamation Bureau is a part, as saying, “Dominy yanked money in and out of those congressmen’s districts like a yo-yo.”
Mr. Dominy, who was not an engineer, worked his political and administrative magic in completing the Glen Canyon, Flaming Gorge and Navajo Dams in the upper Colorado River basin, and the Trinity River part of California’s Central Valley Project, among many others. The projects stored and regulated water flow, generated electric power and created lakes for recreation. They enabled crops and cities to sprout from the desert.
But they also sometimes drowned thousands of years of Native American history, and millions of years of natural history — not to mention destroying fish habitats. David Brower, the founding director of the Sierra Club, called his own acceptance of the Glen Canyon dam — in return for the bureau’s pulling back on another — his greatest failure....
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His family announced the death.
Even before he became the longest-serving commissioner of the federal Bureau of Reclamation (1959 to 1969), Mr. Dominy, as a rising bureaucrat, showed a knack for persuading senators and representatives to push ahead with massive dams in the arid West.
Marc Reisner in his 1986 book, “Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water,” said Mr. Dominy cultivated Congress “as if he were tending prize-winning orchids.”
Mr. Reisner quoted an official in the Interior Department, of which the Reclamation Bureau is a part, as saying, “Dominy yanked money in and out of those congressmen’s districts like a yo-yo.”
Mr. Dominy, who was not an engineer, worked his political and administrative magic in completing the Glen Canyon, Flaming Gorge and Navajo Dams in the upper Colorado River basin, and the Trinity River part of California’s Central Valley Project, among many others. The projects stored and regulated water flow, generated electric power and created lakes for recreation. They enabled crops and cities to sprout from the desert.
But they also sometimes drowned thousands of years of Native American history, and millions of years of natural history — not to mention destroying fish habitats. David Brower, the founding director of the Sierra Club, called his own acceptance of the Glen Canyon dam — in return for the bureau’s pulling back on another — his greatest failure....