It rises 440 about the Kings River. It’s a concrete behemoth as tall as a 33 story building. And it was the source of national and local controversy for years before construction ever began. The story of Pine Flat Dam, today on KVPR's Central Valley Roots.
East of Fresno on the Kings River near Piedra sits Pine Flat Dam. Farmers began diverting the waters of the Kings in the 1860s and a decade later, those waters fueled the growth of Fresno and surrounding communities, through a complex network of canals. These and other diversions eventually dried up Tulare Lake.
But in flood years the mighty Kings would wreak havoc on those downstream. As early as the late 1800s, people began studying sites for a dam on the river. Those plans got a boost under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal, and after the flood year of 1937/38.
But there was a controversy: which government agency would build the dam? Would it be the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which focused on water for irrigation, or the Army Corps of Engineers, which focused on flood control? Beyond bureaucratic rivalry, there was another sticking point. The Bureau had a rule that no individual could own more than 160 acres of land irrigated by the agency. That drew the ire of big-time growers.
FDR ultimately signed off on the Corps doing preliminary work on the dam, just days before he died. His successor, Harry Truman impounded the funding for construction until the agencies could work it out. The Corps eventually won out. Construction began in 1947 and was finished in 1954. In all, Pine Flat dam cost $42 million dollars. And not surprisingly it was significantly over-budget.
