Information Sheet

 

 

R         Meramec Basin Resources Committee.

777                  Booklet, 1950.

                                    One folder.

 

 

 

This is “A Shameless Sham”: The Army Engineer “Plan” for the Meramec Basin, pub­lished by the Meramec Basin Resources Committee in cooperation with the Conservation Federa­tion of Missouri and the Ozark Protective Association.  These groups opposed plans by the Army Corps of Engineers to build three multiple purpose high dams on the Meramec, Bourbeuse, and Big riv­ers in Missouri.

 

In the planning stages since the late 1930s, in 1949 the St. Louis District of the United States Army Corps of Engineers announced plans to construct three large “multiple purpose” (naviga­tion, flood control, and recreation) dams on the Meramec River and two of its major tributaries.  Early in 1950 the Meramec Basin Resources Committee published “A Shameless Sham” to refute the Corps’s claims of economic and social benefits to be derived from the dams and reservoirs.  The Committee pointed out that the lake behind the Meramec River dam would fluctuate 68 feet between its lowest and highest levels, suggesting that the Corps’s real purpose was to store water for release into the Mississippi River to support barge traffic.  Almost 50,000 acres of bottomland would have been inundated by the projects.

 

The Rt. Rev. Msgr. George J. Hildner, V.F., of Villa Ridge, Missouri, was chairman of the Committee.  Other members included G. Edward Budde of St. Louis, Harry Petrequin of Ste. Genevieve, and noted writer Leonard Hall of Caledonia.

 

Filed with the booklet is an Informational Brochure: Multiple Purpose Reservoirs, Meramec Basin, prepared by the St. Louis District, Corps of Engineers, United States Army, September 1949.  This booklet contains supportive text for the projects, along with detailed maps and charts of the proposed lakes and water flows.

 

 

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