Floyd Dominy

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Floyd Dominy (born 1909) was the Nebraska-born Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner from May 1, 1959 to 1969. Dominy joined the Bureau in 1946. He was the Assistant Commissioner from 1957 to 1958.

A powerbroker in the American West, he eagerly pursued large water public works projects such as Glen Canyon Dam and the resulting creation of Lake Powell. He was critically portrayed in Marc Reisner's voluminous opus, Cadillac Desert, as a hard-nosed, take-no-prisoners apparatchik in service of power for power's sake. Dominy has said of the controversy surrounding his tenure in office: "I have no apologies. I was a crusader for the development of water. I was the Messiah. I was the evangelist who went out and argued persuasively for the harness of water for the benefit of people."

Reisner, and other anti-dam environmentalists, contend that many Western dams were primarily pork, unsustainable without huge governmental subsidy, and that they contributed to the environmental degradation of the West. Dominy believes that the water should be used in service of the people—that the measure of a river's health and utility is how many people can easily use it.

[edit] Trivia

Early in the Nixon administration, Dominy was fired by James Watt, who would later become controversial as Secretary of the Interior in the Reagan Administration. Dominy was replaced by Ellis L. Armstrong.

[edit] References

• Reisner, Marc (1993). Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (Paperback). Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-017824-4.
• McPhee, John (1971). Encounters with the Archdruid (Hardcover). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-14822-8.
• Interview with High Country News, retrieved Nov. 2, 2005
• High Country News article, retrieved Nov. 2, 2005
• BuRec Bio