The reasons behind the South’s infatuation with dams were somewhat elusive. Precipitation in the South is uniformly ample, the rivers run well and often flood, and good damsites are, or were, quite common. But the same applies to New England, and there the landscape contains relatively few dams. There are water-supply reservoirs and small power dams, but only a handful of mammoth structures backing up twenty-mile artificial lakes, which are encountered everywhere in the South. Whatever the reasons, it is an article of faith in the South that you send a politician to Washington to bring home a
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