Man made lake

"I’ll never forget the day, They took my home away, To make a lake that God did not plan. Though it has been many years, I still recall the tears, Shed when they made Flagstaff Dam."

Jeep Wilcox

http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/songstorysamplercollection/47/

Eminent Domain
The power to take private property for public use by a state, municipality, or private person or corporation authorized to exercise functions of public character, following the payment of just compensation to the owner of that property.
Federal, state, and local governments may take private property through their power of eminent domain or may regulate it by exercising their Police Power. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government to provide just compensation to the owner of the private property to be taken. A variety of property rights are subject to eminent domain, such as air, water, and land rights. The government takes private property through condemnation proceedings. Throughout these proceedings, the property owner has the right of due process.
Eminent domain is a challenging area for the courts, which have struggled with the question of whether the regulation of property, rather than its acquisition, is a taking requiring just compensation. In addition, private property owners have begun to initiate actions against the government in a kind of proceeding called inverse condemnation.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/eminent+domain


 This story, can't remember when I heard it for the first time, always intrigued me with a mixture of horror and astonishment. The images of whole towns under water made me shiver. I kept looking for more information, description, people describing the process, but all I got was the same words over and over again. 

The accepted script, how the decision was made, how the process of eviction was carried, how the land was acquired and  then used. But the people, I kept asking myself, the people what about them? how did they feel, what did they do to stop the water?

Did the scream, did they protest, did they dispair?

What got me was realizing that it was not quick and painless, it was a prolonged process that took almost twenty years. Legal actions and then the preparations that constituted of making the area ready.