Looking Back: Citizens Stop Flooding

By J.N. Cheney

Environmental concerns have increased significantly over the last few decades.

Factors such as rising temperatures and water levels, fossil fuel use, and other such things have created for many an existential crisis regarding the future of the planet.

Over 50 years ago, the Unadilla Valley faced its own existential environmental crisis when, in the summer of 1969, the United States Corps of Engineers and the New York State Department of Conservation proposed the construction of four dams throughout the valley.

This threat created a year long battle between the people of the valley and forces that pushed for this project to go through.

These four dams were part of a larger project that aimed to build 10 of these dams throughout four different counties.

According to the June 12 and June 19, 1969, editions of the Star, these dams served a multi-pronged purpose.

They were advertised as providing a new source of aquatic recreation for residents of the region, supplying a steady stream of fresh water to lower regions of the state (even out of state as far as parts of Pennsylvania and Maryland), and mitigating flooding in the valley.

The irony of the last listed purpose is that, if these dams were to be erected, they would flood a significant portion of the Unadilla Valley!

This flooding would displace several residents of Leonardsville, Unadilla Forks, Cassville, West Winfield, and other towns and villages in the radius.

In addition to forcing people to move and destroying the places they called home, local farmland would have been devastated.

The cost to build these destructive dams would have been as high as $225 million,