LibGuides: Southwest Water Resources: Public Works

Finding Resources in the Catalog

There is a wide range of information on dams and other public works at the NMSL.

Here are some tips for searching our catalog:

Name of the dam, reservoir or other structure of interest
- You can add specific terms to further refine your search, such as environmental, legislation, or safety
The agency involved in construction (i.e. The Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, Bureau of Indian Affaird) or the agency charged with monitoring various aspects of the structure (i.e. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, New Mexico State University Experiment Station).

New Mexico State Resources

The Dam Safety Bureau ensures that dams in New Mexico are designed, constructed, operated, and maintained as safely as possible. Dams that equal or exceed 25 feet in height, which exceed 15 acre-feet of storage or dams that equal or exceed 50 acre-feet storage, which equal or exceed 6 feet in height are under the jurisdiction of the State Engineer. Of the more than 600 dams in the state, nearly 300 dams have jurisdictional status.

Image from the National Inventory of Dams (NID) which includes dams more than 25' in height or storing more than 50 acre-ft, or classified as HH or SH potential

The American Society of Civil Engineer's Infrastructure Report Card for New Mexico

The ASCE Committee on America’s Infrastructure, made up of 28 dedicated civil engineers from across the country with decades of expertise in all categories, volunteers their time to work with ASCE Infrastructure Initiatives staff to prepare the Infrastructure Report Card. The Committee assesses all relevant data and reports, consults with technical and industry experts, and assigns grades using the following key criteria: capacity, condition, funding, future need, operation and maintenance, public safety, resilience, and innovation.

In Our Southwest Collection

The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau by Erika Marie Bsumek
Call Number: SW 333.9113097913 B9169F 2023
ISBN: 9781477303818
Publication Date: 2023-01-02
The second highest concrete-arch dam in the United States, Glen Canyon Dam was built to control the flow of the Colorado River throughout the Western United States. Completed in 1966, the dam continues to serve as a water storage facility for residents, industries, and agricultural use across the American West. The dam also generates hydroelectric power for residents in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and Nebraska. More than a massive piece of physical infrastructure and an engineering feat, the dam exposes the cultural structures and complex regional power relations that relied on Indigenous knowledge and labor while simultaneously dispossessing the Indigenous communities of their land and resources across the Colorado Plateau. Erika Marie Bsumek reorients the story of the dam to reveal a pattern of Indigenous erasure by weaving together the stories of religious settlers and Indigenous peoples, engineers and biologists, and politicians and spiritual leaders. Infrastructures of dispossession teach us that we cannot tell the stories of religious colonization, scientific exploration, regional engineering, environmental transformation, or political deal-making as disconnected from Indigenous history. This book is a provocative and essential piece of modern history, particularly as water in the West becomes increasingly scarce and fights over access to it continue to unfold.
Cadillac Desert: the American West and its disappearing water by Marc P. Reisner
Call Number: SW 333.91 R375 1986
ISBN: 0670199273
Publication Date: 1986-08-18
Newly updated, this timely history of the struggle to discover and control water in the American West is a tale of rivers diverted and damned, political corruption and intrigue, billion-dollar battles over water rights, and economic and ecological disaster. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.
At the Base of the Giant's Throat: The Past and Future of America's Great Dams by Anthony R. Palumbi
Call Number: SW 627.80973 P184 2023
ISBN: 9781640124936
Publication Date: 2023-04-01
There are ninety thousand registered dams in the United States, fifty thousand of them classified as "major." Nearly all of this infrastructure was built during a forty-year period, from 1932 to 1972, in an era of public investment and political consensus that seems inconceivable today. These incredible structures--sometimes called the American Pyramids--helped the country rebound from the Great Depression, brought water and electricity to enormous reaches, helped win World War II for the Allies, and became the basis for decades of prosperous stability. At the Base of the Giant's Throat dives into the history of dam-building in the United States as natural waterscapes have been replaced with engineered environments and the bone-dry West became America's produce aisle. From the Folsom Powerhouse cranking sixty-hertz alternating current in the 1890s to the iconic Hoover Dam and the gargantuan Grand Coulee Dam, Anthony R. Palumbi lays out how dams and water projects changed the North American continent forever and laid the groundwork for an age of unprecedented prosperity. He also describes how institutional complacency corrupted the ethos of public power and public works--and how the influence of rich landowners undermined the credibility of that ethos. Palumbi shows how our nation's ability to cope with natural disasters has been fatally compromised by underinvestment in decaying infrastructure. He argues that a livable future demands investment on a scale few Americans currently grasp. To win that future we must interrogate the history of our most vital public works: the dams, canals, and levees helping to channel life's most precious molecule. At the Base of the Giant's Throat tells the story of America through its water, sweeping across five hundred years of history, from the swashbuckling exploits of French colonist Samuel de Champlain to the nightmarish urban flooding of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy.

National Resources

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

Bureau of Reclamation is best known for the dams, powerplants, and canals it constructed in the 17 western states. It has constructed more than 600 dams and reservoirs including the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and the Grand Coulee on the Columbia River. They are largest wholesaler of water in the country. The Bureau of Reclamation brings water to more than 31 million people and provides one out of five Western farmers (140,000) with irrigation water for 10 million acres of farmland that produce 60% of the nation's vegetables and 25% of its fruits and nuts. It is also the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States with 53 powerplants that annually provide more than 40 billion kilowatt hours generating nearly a billion dollars in power revenues and produce enough electricity to serve 3.5 million homes. They maintain a Projects and Facilities database that includes detailed reviews with considerable attention paid to history, costs, beneficiaries, engineering, water data, and productivity. Pages on individual projects, dams, and power plants can be found by selecting off of alphabetical and state listings, and flat maps.

National Inventory of Dams

The goal of the NID is to include all dams in the United States that meet specific criteria, yet in reality, it is limited to information that can be gathered and properly interpreted with the given funding. The NID initially consisted of approximately 45,000 dams, which were gathered from extensive record searches and some feature extraction from aerial imagery. Since continued and methodical updates have been conducted, data collection has been focused on the most reliable data sources, which are the many federal and state government dam construction and regulation offices. The NID is published every two years.

Southwest Water Resources: Public Works

Public works are infrastructure projects financed and constructed by the government. As they relate to water, examples can include: pipelines, canals, water supply, sewage, and dams.

Finding Resources in the Catalog

New Mexico State Resources

In Our Southwest Collection

National Resources