Burke on the Delaware River

KB:

I hope to say more about the relation between technology and ecology, by reference to an acute battle between promoters and environ- mentalists, involving a vast technological project on the Delaware River, in an area near where my own home is located. The project, if it finally gets official political sanction despite the opposition of most people in the localities directly affected, will alter their ''human condition" quite drastically. But many scientific experts, and much apt communication by the local press, have entered the fray valiantly. An editorial in a local newspaper, referring to a similar controversy in a distant area, quotes an official who said :

The more protection projects-such as dams, levees or channelization- built with tax money, the more new buildings are built on flood plains. This results in a need for more tax-paid protection. More darns, levees, and channelizaiions.

That is to say, if an area is naturally subject to floods, there arises a demand to "conquer" the area by technological means of flood control. But as soon as such means are resorted to, people promptly move in, to the extent that they go beyond the controlled area. Hence, having turned a bit of nature into real estate, they feel that nature should behave, and they judge it as an "act of God" when the new fringe unprotected by the flood control gets flooded. Whereupon there is an outcry for more flood control. Add to that the proposition, "no construction without destruction," and you immediately see the likeli- hood of developments whereby the extension of such projects leads to new "side-effects," owing to the fact that all such technolot,ric enter- prises can introduce complicating factors, in radically altering the "ecological balance" of the areas directly or indirectly affected.

From COMMUNICATION AND THE HUMAN CONDITION edited by Lee Thayer