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Glacier View Dam was proposed in 1943 on the North Fork of the Flathead River, on the western border of Glacier National Park in Montana. The tall dam, to be designed and constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the canyon between Huckleberry Mountain and Glacier View Mountain, would have flooded in excess of of the park. In the face of determined opposition from the National Park Service and conservation groups, the dam was never built. ==Proposal== The Glacier View project was proposed after an earlier proposal by the Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration to raise the level of Flathead Lake by damming its outlet was rejected following local protests. Located in a relatively unpopulated area, the Glacier View reservoir would have flooded lower Camas Creek and would have raised the level of Logging Lake by , inundating much of the winter range for the park's white-tailed deer, elk, mule deer and moose.〔Corps of Engineers 1950 Columbia River and Tributaries Report 1950, p. 153〕 The proposed reservoir was to extend nearly to the Canadian border,〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=Army Corps of Engineers )〕 at an estimated cost of $94,962,000.〔Corps of Engineers 1950 Columbia River and Tributaries Report, p. 15〕 The dam was supported by Montana Representative Mike Mansfield and Flathead Valley interests, but was opposed by former Senator Burton K. Wheeler, local ranchers, the National Park Service, the Glacier Park Hotel Company, the Sierra Club, Society of American Foresters and the Audubon Society. Public hearings were held in 1948 and 1949. Turnout at the 1948 hearings at Kalispell was influenced by extensive flooding then occurring in the Flathead Valley.〔Corps of Engineers 1950 Columbia River and Tributaries Report, p. 152〕 Exploratory drilling took place in 1944 and 1945 at Glacier View and Foolhen Hill.〔 The project was terminated by a joint memorandum between the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of the Army on April 11, 1949, but Mansfield introduced an unsuccessful bill later in the year directing the Corps of Engineers to proceed with the dam, stating that the dam "would not affect the beauty of the park in any way but would make it more beautiful by creating a large lake over ground that ... has no scenic attraction." The Corps of Engineers report on the project noted: The park lands that will be inundated and required for freeboard of 5 feet above normal pool elevation amounts to , or about 1 percent of the total Glacier National Park area. This area does not lie within the rugged, glacier-covered portion of the park for which it is noted, but rather is on the western boundary line, in a little-used valley. The reservoir area is covered with lodge-pole pine, an inferior species of limited use. Other species of pine timber such as ponderosa pine, are predominate above the normal full reservoir and will not be injured by the project. Other lands inundated or required by this project are in private, State and United States Forest Service ownership and hence should be of no concern to the Park Service. Although there would be some effect on the wildlife in the area, the construction of Glacier View Reservoir would inconvenience but relatively few people as it is situated in a sparsely populated area.〔 Park Service Director Newton B. Drury responded: The effects of the proposed impoundment of the North Fork of the Flathead River upon Glacier National Park would be extraordinarily serious upon the very values with the National Park Service is obliged by law, and expected by the public, to protect ... The flooding of park land would reduce the winter range of (deer ) by 56 percent. In order to prevent extensive starvation, it would be necessary for the Park Service to undertake the slaughter of most of these animals ... We cannot afford, except for the most compelling reasons — which we are convinced do not exist in this case — to permit this impairment of one of the finest properties of the American people.〔 Drury went on to state that of land would be flooded, including virgin Ponderosa pine.〔 In order to show that the area was of recreational value, the Park Service constructed the Camas Creek Road through the area.〔 The dam was opposed by the Park Service and conservation organizations on principal as an intrusion into lands that had been made inviolate by their inclusion in a national park, with about a third of the reservoir located on Park Service lands.〔Corps of Engineers 1950 Columbia River and Tributaries Report, p. 150〕 The precedent established at Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite National Park was not to be repeated. A similar, more difficult fight followed over the proposed Echo Park Dam in Dinosaur National Monument.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Glacier View Dam」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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