Harvey Oren Banks

It was under his term as Director that the California Legislature adopted the Burns-Porter Act authorizing the construction of the SWP in 1959.

Banks' papers (1940-1995) are held at the Water Resources Collections and Archives, University of California, Riverside.

As a strong advocate of the Burns-Porter Act of 1956, Banks was named the first Director of the newly created California Department of Water Resources.

Their design called for the creation of a large multi-use facility near Los Banos, California that could also tie into the US Federal Government's pre-existing Central Valley Project.

In 1961, Banks left the Department of Water Resources, and returned to both the private sector as a consulting engineer and to school in order to pursue a Ph.D.