Walter Clay Lowdermilk
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Walter Clay Lowdermilk (July 1, 1888 – May 6, 1974) was a soil conservationist who worked in countries throughout the world to help protect and reclaim lands in order to better feed their population. Lowdermilk worked with the Belgian Relief Effort (B.R.E., active 1914–1916 in Belgium and France) after World War I, in China in the 1920s to help avert famine, with the Soil Conservation Service, in fascist Italy in the 1930s, in the United States, and in Mandatory Palestine planning land and water use. In the latter he was impressed by the advanced techniques that the Zionist settlers, and later the
State of Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
, took to develop water efficient agriculture and land use. A 1944 outline of local water development became known as the "Lowdermilk plan" and was of importance for the later
National Water Carrier of Israel National Water Carrier of Israel The National Water Carrier of Israel ( he, המוביל הארצי, ''HaMovil HaArtzi'') is the largest water project in Israel, completed in 1964. Its main purpose is to transfer water from the Sea of Galilee ...
.


Education and career

Walter Clay Lowdermilk was named a
Rhodes Scholar The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...
in 1911, attending Oxford after his undergraduate education at the University of Arizona. He married Inez Marks in August 1922. They had two children: Winifred Esther Lowdermilk (married
Wilmot N. Hess Dr. Wilmot N. Hess (October 16, 1926 – April 16, 2004) was an American physicist who was involved with many ambitious scientific projects of the 20th century, including the Plowshares project, the NASA Apollo moon missions, the National Ocea ...
) and William Francis Lowdermilk (deceased) . Lowdermilk received his PhD from the University of California in 1929. He served in World War I as an engineer and in the Belgian Relief Commission (1917–1918). He has been active as Flood control engineer and scientist in China and was Assistant Chief of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, US Department of Agriculture. He served as a President of the American Geophysical Union (1941–1944).


Positions and style

Lowdermilk's assumptions about soil conservation had a strong focus on cultural background. He was a conservationist influenced by George Perkins Marsh.Earth Repair: A Transatlantic History of Environmental Restoration,
Marcus Hall Marcus Thomas Jackson Hall (born 24 March 1976) is an English former footballer who played as a defender from 1994 until 2011. He had two spells with Coventry City, playing in the Premier League in his first, as well as playing in the Footb ...
University of Virginia Press, 2005
His public speeches and popular books contained various allegation to religious and historical evidence and legends. Compare: "Thou shalt inherit the holy earth as a faithful steward conserving its resources and productivity from generation to generation. Thou shalt safeguard thy fields from soil erosion, thy living waters from drying up, thy forests from desolation, and protect thy hills from overgrazing by the herds, that thy descendants may have abundance forever. If any shall fail in this stewardship of the land, thy fruitful fields shall become sterile stony ground or wasting gullies, and thy descendants shall decrease and live in poverty or perish from off the face of the earth. ''The Eleventh Commandment'' written and broadcast over the radio by Dr. Lowdermilk in Jerusalem during June 1939 was dedicated to the Palestinian Jewish villages whose good stewardship of the earth inspired this idea." '' Palestine, Land of Promise'' (1944) is one of his books. One of his pamphlets, ''Conquest of the Land Through Seven Thousand Years'', was copied in the millions. He was quite positive about the Italian (fascist) land reclamation projects in the Pontine Marshes in Italy, which was, in the early stages of the
New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
and before Italy–United States relations degraded, rather common for especially democratic leaning Americans. In 1940 he provided a rather critical review of the White Paper of 1939. He cited the dire fate of mostly Christian Assyrians in Iraq (compare
Iraq Levies The Assyrian Levies (also known as the Iraq Levies) were the first Iraqi military force established by the British in British controlled Iraq. The Iraq Levies originated in a local Arab armed scout force raised during the First World War. After I ...
) after the British left the former mandate. Lowdermilk assumed, that the Jews in the then
Palestine Mandate The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, both of which had been conceded by the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I in 1918. The mandate ...
region 'would be massacred' similarly by Muslims, if left as a minority. Lowdermilk and his wife Inez, themselves gentiles, supported the Zionist cause and Jewish settlements in Palestine. He was quite optimistic about the absorptive capacity of the region for enhanced settlements. A water development project outlined by him became later known as the "Lowdermilk plan" The Plan was recommended by the United States in 1944 and is still of importance for the later
National Water Carrier of Israel National Water Carrier of Israel The National Water Carrier of Israel ( he, המוביל הארצי, ''HaMovil HaArtzi'') is the largest water project in Israel, completed in 1964. Its main purpose is to transfer water from the Sea of Galilee ...
. Parts of it, as the use of the Litani River to irrigate the
Negev desert The Negev or Negeb (; he, הַנֶּגֶב, hanNegév; ar, ٱلنَّقَب, an-Naqab) is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its southe ...
have been controversial. As early as 1946 the Church of Scotland presbytery in Jerusalem submitted a memorandum against the plan, as they feared it would spoil the sanctity of the
Sea of Galilee The Sea of Galilee ( he, יָם כִּנֶּרֶת, Judeo-Aramaic: יַמּא דטבריא, גִּנֵּיסַר, ar, بحيرة طبريا), also called Lake Tiberias, Kinneret or Kinnereth, is a freshwater lake in Israel. It is the lowest ...
. The suggestion of refilling the Dead Sea through a
Mediterranean–Dead Sea Canal The Mediterranean–Dead Sea Canal (MDSC) is a proposed project to dig a canal from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea, taking advantage of the 400-metre difference in water level between the seas. The project could correct the drop in the lev ...
was based on earlier approaches and is still of importance.


Honors

Lowdermilk Department of Agricultural Engineering at Technion University in Israel is named in his honor, "the world-renowned American expert on soil conservation, who supported the development of the State of Israel, and guided and inspired this Department from its first days." He was Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, 1962.


References


Further reading

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External links


Walter Lowdermilk's Journey: Forester to Land Conservationist



A centennial profile: Walter Clay Lowdermilk
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lowdermilk, Walter C. 1888 births 1974 deaths American conservationists American Rhodes Scholars Fellows of the American Geophysical Union Palestinologists