LangeMemo14

Throughout the middle part of the twentieth century, hydrology’s principal empirical and theoretical concerns were deeply connected with its role as the handmaiden to big-dam engineering projects. Hydrologists were concerned first and foremost with measuring the contents of rivers so as to produce estimates both of the size of future reservoirs and the amount of power which could be produced by dams. The era of decolonization corresponds, perhaps not coincidentally with the era during which Western policymakers and publics began to lose faith in big dams. Organizations like the World Bank began lending money to post-colonial countries to build the dams which westerners no longer desired; however, the outcome for hydrology was essentially the same: actual water capacity never amounted to scientific estimates. The era of big dams is at a close and hydrology faces a two pronged problem: its cultural authority has been diminished by its 20th century history while at the same time growing water crises present a methodological problem since much of current hydrology is based on the assumption of a stable and measurable hydrological cycle.