• "Greed for Land":W. W. Ashe and the Environmental Roots of the 1921 Flood in Central Texas
• Char Miller (bio)

W. W. Ashe circa 1926. Photograph courtesy of Will Ashe Bason.

[End Page 62]

In 2010–11, the San Antonio River Authority (SARA) spent an estimated $4 million retrofitting the Olmos Dam (built between 1925 and 1927); workers drilled sixty-eight top-to-bottom holes in the dam and in each inserted cable tendons that were then anchored in bedrock, tightened, and sealed. This project was a consequence of floods in 1998 and 2002, during which a worrisome volume of water had roared down Olmos Creek, which at thirty-two square miles serves as the upper reaches of the San Antonio River—its headwaters. Each time, the floodwaters had piled up behind the aging detention dam and submerged US 281, San Antonio's vital north-south highway. Concerned about the dam's stability, engineers also were struck by how fast the rampaging flow had moved downstream. The two concerns were related and directly connected to US Route 281: it is a key thoroughfare for those commuting daily from their homes in the northern suburbs to work in the downtown core (and beyond). These commuters live in subdivisions that extend along and radiate out from the highway, and they shop in the many malls and strip centers platted at each exit. By the late 1990s, Olmos Creek's upper basin had been built out and what once had been a landscape of oaks, junipers, and grassland had been made impervious with every roof, gutter, street, and parking lot. These intertwined developments accelerated the movement [End Page 63] of water across this concertized terrain, forcing SARA to retrofit the Olmos Dam.¹

W.W. Ashe (1872–1932), who had been a witness to the 1921 flood that had hammered San Antonio and led to the construction of the Olmos Dam in the first place, would not have been surprised that early twenty-first century engineers discovered there was a tight link between upstream conditions and downstream dangers. That is precisely what he had warned would happen if the city's public officials and business elite—the dam's lead advocates—did not better manage the environment north of where the flood-retention infrastructure was to be built. Ashe was not concerned about concrete, but cattle. Yet for all their differences, the inanimate building material and the four-legged ruminant had this in common: they flattened the land.

As a scientist and researcher, Ashe, who was working for the United States Forest Service in 1921, had been studying the interplay between high country watersheds and valley communities that depended on them since the 1890s.² He had begun this work while employed by the North Carolina Geological Survey, under whose aegis he examined how deforestation and overgrazing contributed significantly to the frequency and intensity of floods in the Appalachian Mountains. He assessed these and other anthropogenic factors in an 1897 path-breaking volume, Timber Trees and Forests of North Carolina, which he co-authored with forester Gifford Pinchot and who as first chief of the Forest Service later hired Ashe to work for the federal agency.³ He noticed that degraded land increased erosion, and that this erosion filled streams with silt. When heavy rains pounded cutover mountains and chewed-up hills, creeks quickly filled with debris-driving floodwaters, a churning force that carried uprooted trees and bushes, boulders, rocks, and gravel. This dangerous energy plowed up farmlands, undercut bridges, and slammed into river towns and cities.

To combat the damage that such floods routinely produced in the Appalachians from New England to the Deep South, grassroots organizations championed legislation that would enable the federal government to purchase denuded land from willing sellers with the goal of regenerating forest and grass cover. After more than a decade of debate, activists in the North and South managed to secure congressional approval for what is known as the Weeks Act (1911). One crucial element of this bill was [End Page 64] the creation of the National Forest Reservation Commission, which would determine which...

• “对土地的贪婪”：WW Ashe 和 1921 年德克萨斯州中部洪水的环境根源
• 查尔·米勒（生物）

WW Ashe 大约 1926 年。照片由 Will Ashe Bason 提供。

[结束第 62 页]

我Ñ2010-11，所述š一个甲ntonio ř艾弗甲uthority（SARA）用了一个估计耗资 400 万美元改造奥尔莫斯大坝（建于 1925 年至 1927 年之间）；工人们在大坝和每根插入的电缆束中钻了 68 个从上到下的孔，然后将它们锚定在基岩中，拧紧并密封。该项目是 1998 年和 2002 年洪水的后果，在此期间，令人担忧的水量涌入奥尔莫斯河，该河面积 32 平方英里，是圣安东尼奥河上游的上游——它的源头。每一次，洪水都堆积在老化的滞留大坝后面，淹没了圣安东尼奥重要的南北高速公路 US 281。出于对大坝稳定性的担忧，工程师们也对汹涌的水流向下游移动的速度感到震惊。这两个问题与美国 281 号公路相关并直接相关：对于那些每天从北部郊区的家到市中心（及其他地区）工作的人来说，这是一条重要的通道。这些通勤者居住在沿高速公路延伸并从高速公路向外辐射的分区中，他们在每个出口的许多购物中心和地带中心购物。到 1990 年代后期，Olmos Creek 的上游盆地已经建成，曾经的橡树、杜松和草原景观已被每个屋顶、排水沟、街道和停车场变得不透水。这些相互交织的发展加速了运动 上盆地已经建成，曾经是橡树、杜松和草原的景观，每个屋顶、排水沟、街道和停车场都变得不透水。这些相互交织的发展加速了运动 上盆地已经建成，曾经是橡树、杜松和草原的景观，每个屋顶、排水沟、街道和停车场都变得不透水。这些相互交织的发展加速了运动[第 63 页结束]水穿过这个协调的地形，迫使 SARA 改造奥尔莫斯大坝。¹

WW Ashe (1872–1932) 见证了 1921 年的洪水袭击了圣安东尼奥并首先导致了奥尔莫斯大坝的建设，他不会对 21 世纪早期的工程师发现那里感到惊讶是上游条件和下游危险之间的紧密联系。这正是他所警告的，如果该市的公职人员和商业精英——大坝的主要倡导者——没有更好地管理将要建造的防洪基础设施以北的环境，就会发生这种情况。阿什关心的不是混凝土，而是牛。然而，尽管存在差异，无生命的建筑材料和四足反刍动物有一个共同点：他们把土地夷为平地。

作为一名科学家和研究员，阿什于 1921 年在美国林务局工作，自 1890 年代以来一直在研究高地流域与依赖它们的山谷社区之间的相互作用。²他在受雇于北卡罗来纳州地质调查局期间开始了这项工作，在该调查局的支持下，他研究了森林砍伐和过度放牧对阿巴拉契亚山脉洪水频率和强度的显着影响。他在 1897 年的开创性著作《北卡罗来纳州的木材和森林》中评估了这些和其他人为因素，该书是他与林务员 Gifford Pinchot 合着的，后来他作为林务局的第一任局长聘请阿什为联邦机构工作。 . ³他注意到退化的土地增加了侵蚀，这种侵蚀使河流充满淤泥。当大雨袭击断断续续的山脉和被咀嚼的山丘时，小溪很快就充满了驱动泥石流的洪水，一股翻腾的力量将连根拔起的树木和灌木、巨石、岩石和砾石连根拔起。这种危险的能量耕种了农田，凿毁了桥梁，并冲进了河流城镇。

为了对抗这种洪水在从新英格兰到南部腹地的阿巴拉契亚山脉经常造成的破坏，草根组织支持立法，使联邦政府能够从自愿的卖家那里购买裸露的土地，目标是再生森林和草地。经过十多年的辩论，南北活动家设法获得国会批准，即所谓的“周法案”（1911）。该法案的一个关键要素是[End Page 64]国家森林保护委员会的成立，该委员会将决定哪些...