Reber plan

Proposed Barriers in San Francisco Bay. Reber Plan (1942). The map shows the two dams that, according to Reber's plan, delimit the Bay of San Francisco and at the same time create two large freshwater lakes. Are shown still in red areas in the east of the bay by land reclamation should arise. A canal for shipping runs in north-south direction on the right side of the map.

The Reber Plan (originally also San Francisco Bay Project ) is the name of the plan developed by John Reber in the 1940s to redesign the Bay of San Francisco in such a way that land for the construction of traffic routes as well as civil and military facilities is gained and at the same time the Drinking water supplies to the San Francisco Bay Area metropolitan area would be improved. After considerable contradiction from the population and a feasibility study proved that the project was impracticable, the plan was finally abandoned at the end of the 1950s.

Reber's plan

Reber's plan was to build huge dams roughly where the Richmond – San Rafael Bridge and the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge span the San Francisco Bay today . The northern dam should extend from Marin County in the west to Richmond in the east and the southern dam from San Francisco to Oakland . At the same time, large parts of the eastern bay, the San Pablo Bay and the Richardson Bay should be made usable by embankments. A canal running through this area in a north-south direction was intended to serve civil and military shipping. In this way, according to Rebers, two large freshwater lakes would have been created in the north and south, which would have ensured the enormous demand for drinking water in the region around San Francisco.

At the same time, the plan provided for the creation of multi-lane highways and railways for rail traffic. In the event of an attack on California from the Pacific, these traffic routes would have been available for relocating the population in the west of the bay. In addition, the plan called for the construction of military installations to defend the San Francisco Bay Area . All of this has to be seen against the background that at the time of Reber's planning the United States was still in the shock of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor .

The US Army Corps of Engineers' feasibility study

The US Army Corps of Engineers Bay Model in Sausalito is one of the historical remnants of John Reber's plans.

In 1957, the United States Army Corps of Engineers conducted a feasibility study on Reber's plan. For this purpose, the engineers built a 1.5  acres (around 6,070 square meters) scale model of the Bay of San Francisco. Visited today in Sausalito, not far from San Francisco , this model helped United States Army engineers understand the tidal water currents and sediment shifts in the bay. However, in the course of this simulation it also turned out that John Reber's plan was not feasible, whereupon it was finally abandoned.

See also

• Atlantropa project

Web links

• The Reber Plan: A Big Idea for San Francisco Bay - KQED's Saving the Bay series on YouTube. Further information can be found in the accompanying material for schoolchildren available on savingthebay.org(PDF)
• Inventory of the San Francisco Bay Saline Water Barrier Collection, 1929–1963 - List of documents relating to the Reber Plan found in the Online Archive of California.
• The Planner, John Reber on His Way to Present His “Reber Plan” Which Would Restructure San Francisco Bay - John Reber in a photo taken in 1950. From the photo archive of the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.
• Salt Water Barriers - Brief description of the Reber Plan on the Bridging the Bay pages of the UC Berkeley Library.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On the Bay Area Model and its role in the Reber Plan, cf. Janice Sinclair: The Fitness of Physical Models , in: Pacific Standard. The Science of Society, December 5, 2011.