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The Historic Resource Study on water-level regulation at Voyageurs National Park, prepared by David L. Fritz and Lawrence F. Van Horn for the National Park Service, turns here to the year a president nearly stopped a dam already half built. This instalment follows the study’s account of the 1908 veto of a time-extension bill, the Ontario and Dominion enactments beside it, and the 1910 amendment to the General Dam Act that followed.
The study records that Backus’s company needed Congress to extend the time allowed to finish the dam across Rainy River, through House Bill 15444. The study describes a man with his fortunes tied to a region that in 1907 had nothing useful to export: Backus, with his associates, had spent $4M finishing the Minnesota and International Railway out to its railhead on the Rainy River, so that the rails carrying in building materials only added to the red ink.
The study records that Roosevelt had signed two earlier bills extending the dam’s construction time before he balked in 1908. It records the veto message to the House of Representatives as dated April 13, 1908, Senate Document 438 of the 60th Congress, first session, and quotes from it:
this natural wealth is the heritage of the people . see no reason for giving it away, though there is every reason for not imposing conditions so burdensome as to prevent the utilization of the power.
The study records that Roosevelt set out five provisions for future dam building: strict time limits on every project; a designated official to enforce them; another to assure the maximum development of navigation and power; a fee paid by dam builders for the privilege; and privileges fixed at an interval, subject to review, extension or termination.
The study records that Frederick C. Stevens of Minnesota, chairman of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, answered that Roosevelt would not have opposed the bill had he known all the facts. Stevens’ report noted that the company had expended $750K to date and had satisfied four governments (state, province, Dominion and United States) in good faith. Secretary of the Interior James R. Garfield added a letter report conveying Roosevelt’s latest view, the study says, in which the Rainy River Improvement Company, through its president,
has filed with the War Department an agreement that it will submit to and abide by such conditions as may be imposed by the Secretary of War.
On Backus’s side of the veto, the study puts the money already sunk at $4M for the railway and $750K for the dam. On the president’s side, the study records that Roosevelt could not foresee that the high water he wanted for navigation would become a curse to riparian owners, and it records that environmentalists later contended before Congress and the International Joint Commission that Backus was not living up to the promises in his 1908 letter.
The study lists three successive Ontario acts that kept the project alive on the Canadian side: Chapter 23, section 33, of 1907; Chapter 33, section 61, of 1908; and Chapter 26, section 12, of 1909. The study records that the last of them expired January 1, 1910, but lasted long enough to see the dam completed during 1909.
The study records that on January 27, 1909, the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario approved four changes in council: raising the power output from 7,000 to 9,000 kilowatts, installing six floodgates instead of one on the Canadian canal for safety, curving the dam’s apex instead of angling it, and replacing an earthen embankment with a crib dyke upstream.
The study records that once the dynamos at Fort Frances were running in late 1909, Backus found little demand on the Ontario side and petitioned Ottawa for relief. It records that an order of January 18, 1910 allowed the company to export 6,000 horsepower to the United States, and that an Order in Council of June 2, 1910 required that:
the company shall leave at least one thousand horsepower constantly available and unemployed for use or in use on the Canadian side.
The study records that the same day the Ontario Minister of Lands, Forests and Mines issued Backus an indenture on the export terms. The study dates the Ontario act confirming it to March 24, 1911, and records that the Canadian Parliament passed its own act in the summer of 1910 licensing Backus to export 3,500 horsepower.
The study records that S. J. Chapleau, District Engineer for the Department of Public Works, Canada, later sent his chief a memorandum arguing the dam had never received proper authorization from the correct Dominion authorities. Chapleau’s account began with the company’s original plans, approved by an Order-in-Council of September 19, 1905, though the study notes he did not specify whether that order came from Ontario or the Dominion.
The study records that the company later substituted new plans at an unspecified date and built the dam to those modified specifications. According to the study, with the work nearly finished in early 1909, the company obtained two further Orders-in-Council, from Ontario on January 27, 1909 and from the Dominion on February 1, 1909.
The study records that Chapleau considered the Dominion approval improper, since the enabling legislation required plans approved before construction began, and that the Department of Public Works had refused to approve the modified plans. The study cites two letters of May 27 and June 9, 1909, from the Deputy Minister of Public Works to Blake, Lash and Cassils, Backus’s solicitors, and notes that changes to the waste gates on the old canal never received a Dominion Order-in-Council, though they did receive Ontario Privy Council approval.
The study records Chapleau’s conclusion that the department’s engineers had done their duty and bore no responsibility for the irregularities, and that officials in Ottawa, facing a nearly completed multimillion dollar dam, signed the Orders-in-Council rather than block it.
The study records that Congress, acting on Roosevelt’s recommendations, amended the General Dam Act of 1906 by 36 Stat. 593, Ch. 360, on June 23, 1910. The revisions guaranteed navigability on dammed streams, sought a comprehensive plan for navigation across an interlocking system of lakes and rivers, and imposed charges on dam owners for privileges fixed at a fifty-year term.
The study records that the new act repeated the 1906 act’s reservation to the United States of power over a dam’s pool levels, a reservation it says existed to enhance navigation, not to protect environmental concerns. It records that the 1906 act and its 1910 amendment stood as the only general guidance for dam builders until the Federal Power Act of 1920.
The study’s next section turns to the Bryce-Root Treaty of 1909 and the International Joint Commission it created, which later took up boundary-water disputes at the falls.
How the Falls Got Its Dam is a 10-part series read from federal records that are in the public domain — a National Park Service historic resource study of water-level regulation in the Rainy Lake watershed, and the Government Printing Office transcripts of International Joint Commission hearings. How the Falls Got Its Dam — part 3 of 10. Every statute citation, every date and every named order in it is checked automatically against the pages listed below before it is published, and every quotation is checked word for word against the scanned text. The scans carry machine-read text, and where the scan is rough this series says so rather than tidying it.
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