The Dam

I can still see the deer, dozens of them, grazing on the lawn around The Dam.

Since I was a little boy, The Dam (Shasta Dam) has been a dominant landmark. We used to take rides to The Dam after getting root beer freezes. We fished off its banks. We watched as tons of water went over its spillway. We marveled at the size of it, the power of it. We even went there to "neck" in high school.

The Central Valley Project was part of The Dam. A series of dams were planned over about a 50 year period, from 1900 to approximately 1965 dams were built all over the country, for hydro-electric power, flood control, and reclamation of lands and watershed that had been destroyed by gold mining, and de-forestation of the 1800s.

Many environmentalists decry what was done, and resist virtually every modern attempt to either increase the size of dams or build new ones. However, the benefit to mankind and development have far outweighed their concerns.

The Dam was built during the last years of the Great Depression and during World War II. Because it was the last of the large dams of the era, the government was on a tight budget.

A manifestation of that was the poor city that was left in the shadow of The Dam. Usually, the federal government left a well planned town, where the workers on the dam used to live. This time, money was tight, so the government just left, with only an elaborate management quarters as evidence of their presence.

This has meant that Potterville had a "slum" on its northern border, that has been a problem ever since. A few years ago this area incorporated into Shasta Lake City, still a poor area, but attempting to develop and improve.

A recent Potterville development was the recall of a Tea Party fanatical City Councilwoman. The citizens of Shasta Lake City, who sit in the middle of what a massive federal project developed, still are strangely conservative; but not that conservative!

So, they recalled a wing-nut, who was attacking everybody and everything. Potterville watched with amusement, and elected more Tea Party members.

I don't think most people really appreciate The Dam. They can't remember (most were not born yet) that these projects provided jobs during the Great Depression that literally saved millions of lives. They forget that these large projects, caused a huge budget deficit, that has been repaid thousands of times over.

Literally, the Sacramento Valley's agricultural vitality is directly due to The Dam. Without the water projects and irrigation it provides, there would be no agricultural industry in the Sacramento Valley. This is a multi-billion dollar industry.

The placer mining had caused so much silt to run down the Sacramento River, that sea water was encroaching into the Sacramento Valley. Without The Dam, to push fresh water to the Pacific Ocean, you would not be able to grow anything in the Sacramento Valley. No billion dollar industry.

One wonders what will happen when the ocean levels rise due to Global Warming!

We live here in Potterville, with not just one, but three huge dams close, proof that big government works for our benefit, and vote crazy conservative all the time.

We have an active Tea Party, who demands a loyalty oath of all candidates. We have government haters, who fight every government project, who want to be left alone as rugged individualists (some have large marijuana projects).

But the people of Potterville still go on rides to The Dam, read the inscriptions on the plaques that are all around, about how We The People built the dam.

And most, don't have any appreciation at all for what we can do when we work together.

And the large majority hate the government.

And that, is what will doom Potterville and our country to defeat.