Meramec Dam Project

[hank franklin]

Beautiful.

[Brian Jones]

Thanks Al. I was hoping to get your insight on this. Would you care if I used some of this info in the other thread??

[skeeter]

Where to start ? So much of what Agnew wrote did happen but the facts from the other side are totally lacking. The victors always write the history books so that's what people will believe and swallow but I, along with several other Bass fishermen in local clubs, was involved on the pro-Meramec Lake side and can tell you that you aren't getting even close to both sides of this long-dead issue. Contrary to what you are reading in other posts, there was a large amount of public support for the Lake in anticipation of a close-by, flat water resource becoming available to East Central Missourians. The problem was, there was no formal organization like the anti's had in the Sierra Club, to express their approval so those in favor of the Lake had no voice and that became evident with the MDC and MO Conservation Federation being overwhelmed with organized and well-funded numbers of letters and phone calls in opposition to the Lake and therefore, changing their minds believing they were representing actual public opinion. Remember, these phone calls were made back before caller I.D. so the recipients had no way of telling they were all coming from a "phone bank" with the same person making multiple calls. Agnew left out Gebhardt's support of killing the lake/dam in response to the Sierra Club's meddling in his town-hall meetings and "seeding" those same meetings with attendance by many dozens of Sierra Club supporters not residing in the 3rd District who were distributed around the gym at the Bishop DuBourg High School meeting in a well-orchestrated effort to make it appear that applause support came from everywhere in response to Gebhardt's negative speechifying against the project. I was personally in attendance at that meeting and watched, in amazement, the organization and direction present, pre-meeting, telling each group of anti's where to sit.

I was one of many working stiffs who wanted a nearby Lake to take my then-young family to without enduring a three-four hour car ride and high priced overnight stays at LOZ. Rimbach was a complete amateur with no training or credentials to conduct his "subterranean mapping techniques" and tried to pass himself off as some kind of "professional" cave expert and bona fide Engineers, both private and Government employed, with Degrees from reputable Schools and years of experience, knew this but couldn't get the media to publish anything negative about the guy. Lester Dill's Meramec Caverns was located a few miles downstream of the dam site and would have been protected against the rapid and destructive Meramec River near-flash-floods. Symington's visit to Onondaga was orchestrated, in-part, by Rimbach and Dill, the former of who, it was later discovered and proven, had gone into the cave which was then under Dill's ownership, and re-located the high water survey marks to a much higher level than what the COE had placed throughout the cave system after a thorough and wholly professionally conducted survey. LOZ association (I can't recall their exact title) did write several five figure checks to the local Sierra Club headed up by the master of half-truths, Jerry Sugarman. LOZ association was scared to death of Meramec Lake and one check was revealed to have been in the amount of $50.000.00. Try fighting that kind of money while working for living, raising a family and attempting to defuse half-truths and outright lies about the project as spread by Rimbach and the Sierra Club. Many of the "anti" Dam forces didn't hold 9 to 5 jobs and could free themselves up at a moment's notice to go around to service clubs, Church based organizations, school groups during class time etc. etc. and relate their highly biased opinion of the project. And the "cost overruns" were caused, in large part, by the delaying tactics of the anti-dam movement. The really funny thing is today, the Meramec on weekends in the Summer is virtually unfishable from a jet-drive boat due to the bank-to-bank "aluminum hatch" floating downstream mixed freely with those out-of-control rubber rafts that bounce around overloaded with beer guzzling, inebriated partiers completely ruining the peace, beauty and serenity of that River. And lastly, had the Meramec Dam project been completed on time, the disastrous flood that took out Valley Park in Dec. 1982 could have been reduced to 1/3 of what it was as the Lake was scheduled to only just begin filling at that time and could have retained a high percentage of those flood waters. http://interact.stltoday.com/mds/news/html/1425

By the way, you should have seen the original 1950's plans for damming the Meramec. The dam site selected was just downstream of the Big and Meramec River's confluence and would have created a Lake completely taking out Pacific, MO and backing water up the Meramec as far as Sullivan, MO with branches reaching far up the Bourbeuse and Big Rivers both.

[Daryk Campbell Sr]

if you have 5 minutes, watch and listen.

[Mark]

I have to applaud both Al and Skeeter. Interesting takes with different views. I'm 53 years old and don'tremember any of this happening. I have to agree with one thing Skeeter says, the victors always seem to write the history, and as we all know, what we have read in our history books throughout our lives isn't always the whole truth. I will stay out of this debate because I don't know all the facts. But it think itwas great to hear the truth from 2 different knowlegable people. A good point for all - just because you read it somewhere doesn't always make it true.

[Greasy B]

Thanks for giving the other side of the story Skeeter. I have a very good friend who was pro lake. We shared many a lively conversation on the subject. We're stlll best buddies and a few times a year we fish out of his place on LOZ as well as on the middle meramec.

[Al Agnew]

There is some truth to what Skeeter wrote, but also a lot of sour grapes in my opinion. By the time all of it came to a head, Rimbach was acknowledged to be mostly right in everything he said. MDC was entirely independent in their assessment of the habitat to be lost both by the planned Bourbeuse dam and the Meramec dam. The "large amount of public support" was mainly economic interests in the area along with local bass clubs (which I was a member of one at the time and at first, in the early 70s, was as much for the dam as anybody for the reasons he stated--a close-by lake to fish). The "delaying tactics" that supposedly caused the cost overruns did happen, but didn't really cause much delay, since the Corps continued with their work throughout the lawsuits. There is no denying that their original environmental impact statement left them wide open for lawsuits--it was only eight triple spaced pages!

Dam proponents were led by James Gamble and the Meramec Basin Association, and they were backed by a whole lot of money in the St. Louis area, especially from developers wanting to exploit the lower basin once it was protected from flooding. I would guess that, until the tide turned and the opponents gained momentum at least, there was a lot more money behind the dam than with the opponents.

In the end, though, it came down to winning the hearts and minds of the people. The dam opponents wanted the referendum to be statewide, where they were absolutely sure they had the numbers. They lost that battle, as they did many of the battles...the only concession to their side was including the city of St. Louis in the referendum along with the affected counties. Did money from Lake of the Ozarks interests help? Probably, but it wasn't the deciding factor. The deciding factor was a local and national climate in which people were tired of paying for dams that destroyed free-flowing streams.

Would the dam have protected the fast growing cities and suburbs along the lower river? Not the Meramec Dam alone. The Bourbeuse and Big River come in well below where the dam would have been, and those two rivers are big enough to furnish a whole LOT of flood water. The original plan was for the mainstream Meramec Dam, two dams on the Bourbeuse, and two on Big River. It would have taken dams on all three streams to really protect Eureka, Valley Park, and other places along the lower river. And that gets into the argument over whether it's really a good use of taxpayer money to protect places susceptible to flooding by building hugely expensive dams, rather than discouraging development in the flood plains. By the time of the Meramec Dam, the handwriting was on the wall as to big dams in general. People were not going to be willing to pay for three or more big dams on these three streams. The Bourbeuse dam was given up on pretty early. The Pine Ford dam on Big River didn't stand much of a chance once it was pointed out that lead mine waste from the Old Lead Belt upstream would have settled in the lake and made eating fish and using it for drinking water problematical.

Would the lake have been a recreational mecca? Maybe. It would certainly have sustained a lot of use by people from the St. Louis area. But it probably wouldn't have been a huge economic engine like Table Rock, Taneycomo, and Bull Shoals made the Branson area. The lake wouldn't have been big enough, and more importantly, most of its use would have come from St. Louis area people an hour or less away, which would mean that most of those people would not have spent that much money in the lake area, they would still be spending most of it around their homes. All you have to do is look at similar size lakes that are farther from the urban areas of St. Louis and Kansas City to see how little of an economic boom there would have been...you don't see Branson type development of Pomme de Terre, Wappapello, or Mark Twain. Lake of the Ozarks is a special case because it's a private lake, not a COE lake, with very little restriction on development.

I guess it all boils down to what you think is more important, though. If what's important to you is a nice lake close to home to run your bass boat on, and you don't much care about rivers, then you'd have been for the dam back then. But if you love rivers and think lakes are a dime a dozen, then you'd be against it. In any conflict like this one, both sides are usually equally guilty of making their own points look as good as possible while denigrating the other side. There were probably lies and distortions on both sides in the Meramec Dam issue. But what really happened was that by the time the Corps got around to tackling the Meramec, a whole lot of people had come to put more value on rivers than on the big lakes that had destroyed so many of them, and/or were tired of seeing their tax money going to build lakes that didn't directly benefit them.

[Al Agnew]

Thanks Al. I was hoping to get your insight on this. Would you care if I used some of this info in the other thread??

Sure, Brian.

[Gavin]

I was a young pup back then, but remember it being a contentious time..Parents talking and argueing about it at social functions. Gas crisis, The Bi-Centennial, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Regan.. Its good to hear some historical accounts of the Meramec Dam Battle.

[Al Agnew]

Thanks Al,

Synopsis excellence.

If I were a couple of years older I would have had the opportunity to vote against the dam, I am forever indebted to those who did. The unlikely events that saved the Meramec started well before the 60’s and 70’s. If I recall correctly this was part of one of the mega rivers and harbors bills that came after the war. At the Time the Bureau of Land Management and the Corp of Engineers were in an all out race to “tame America’s rivers”. I guess the Meramec Basin project must have been a low priority to avoid the first round of dam building. Budget problems during the Korean War brought more delays.

We are indeed fortunate that fate, luck and the hard work of many passionate river advocates prevailed.

You are absolutely right that timing ultimately saved the Meramec. The era big dams really began in the 1930s with Roosevelt's TVA Authority, the object being to do huge public works projects that would do a lot of good while also employing a lot of people during the Great Depression. By the late 1930s, the War Department already had plans on the drawing board for dams on every major stream in the Ozarks. While Missouri's only two "big" lakes at the time, Taneycomo and Lake of the Ozarks, had been built by private utility companies for power generation, the War Department's lakes were planned mainly for flood control. There were a few voices even back then in opposition to damming high quality streams, including the newly formed Missouri Conservation Federation, but they were largely ignored. World War II slowed the progress of dam building for a while, but after the war it went full steam ahead for many years. Skeeter mentioned that the original plans for the Meramec Basin included a big dam on the Meramec just below the mouth of the Bourbeuse which would have backed water up the Meramec to the site of the later Meramec Dam, and more than 30 miles up the Bourbeuse. But that wasn't the only dam planned...the dam that would later become the Meramec Dam, at Sullivan, was also planned, along with a dam on the lower end of Big River that would have backed water nearly 40 miles up Big River. There were three dams planned for the Gasconade that would have backed water far up the Big Piney as well as drowning most of the Gasconade. There were a total of FIVE dams planned for Current River! There was a big dam planned for the Eleven Point in Arkansas that would have backed water all the way to Riverton in Missouri. There were three dams planned for the Buffalo, that would have in total drowned pretty much the whole river.

There were obviously a number of lakes built before the opposition ever got started...there was little or no organized opposition, except for landowners who were forced to sell their land along the rivers to make way for the lakes. Wappapello was built on the St. Francis back in the 40s. Clearwater on the Black. Norfork on the North Fork. The string of lakes that pretty much drowned all the highest quality stretches of the White and James--Beaver, Table Rock, Bull Shoals. Greers Ferry on the Little Red. Tenkiller Ferry on the Illinois. Stockton on the Sac, Pomme de Terre on the Pomme de Terre. Every one of these lakes wiped out what were arguably the very highest quality stretches of their respective streams. The proposed dams on Current River were the impetus for the drive to make it the nation's first National Scenic Riverway. The dams on the Buffalo were even more the reason for the battle to make it the nation's first "National River". And the Corps spent a lot of time, on the Buffalo especially, battling to dam these two rivers, which probably delayed their attempt to dam the Meramec. By the time they got around to setting their sights on the Meramec, probably even they were reading the handwriting on the wall and realizing that the era of dam building was coming to an end.