Underground Entertainment,    Water Wars

Scariest Thing I Saw This Halloween Was A 1957 California Water Plan

By Tom Chandler 11/2/2012

California's waterscape has been modified beyond all recognition, but what we've got is nothing compared to a 1950s proposal which would have essentially turned the Klamath, Trinity && Eel Rivers into long, thin lakes:

Scary 1957 Plan for California's rivers... The scariest thing I saw this Halloween... 

This wasn't the only spooky plan on tap; poke around this Halloween post on the California Water Blog and you'll find a plan to fire water from cannons to receiving stations miles away. And a scheme which would have turned S.F. Bay into a giant freshwater lake.

Thankfully, none of these plans became a reality, but then, I didn't get my atomic-powered personal flying car either.

See you in the 50s, Tom Chandler.
AuthorPicture

Tom Chandler

As the author of the decade leading fly fishing blog Trout Underground, Tom believes that fishing is not about measuring the experience but instead of about having fun. As a staunch environmentalist, he brings to the Yobi Community thought leadership on environmental and access issues facing us today.

4 comments
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That can also be taken as proof of what we fishermen can accomplish when we get together. Fishermen and hunters do more for conservation as a whole than the other groups all put together. I did get my personal robot it vacuums when I'm out. But it's a dissapointing sad flat round thing with zero personality.
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Thanks for looking it up. Did I use it right? Yes, I think the original plan was always to move water backward through a chain of lakes up the Trinity, then into the CVP.
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Now you went and made me look up "sub-rosa." How was the water grab supposed to work? Pump it backwards up the Trinity? Still, if this plan had gone into effect, I suspect I'd be one hell of a smallmouth bass fisherman.
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Oddly, a year or two ago, someone tried to tell me that the Klamath dam removal push was a sub-rosa plot by Southern California water interests to export *more* water south. He pointed to the '57 water plan as evidence.
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