"Cadillac Desert, The American West and its Disappearing Water"
is a book by Marc Reisner
This book, published in 1986 and revised in 1992, tells how a small government
agency with a
legitimate and
laudable purpose grew and
mutated into a
cancerous bureaucracy fueled by
greed,
politics, and
hubris.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation started out helping homestead farmers
settling the Great Plains to irrigate their farms. As people pushed
farther and farther west into progressively arid areas their need for
supplemental water grew, and the Bureau grew as it took on more projects to
provide that water. The Bureau became focused on damming rivers, building
ever larger dams and more ambitious, more comprehensive projects.
Reisner details how the agency began building dams simply for the sake of
building dams, using questionable accounting methods to justify enormous
expenditures. Most of the projects were built to provide subsidized water
to oversized farms growing surplus crops on marginal lands. This was
all aided and abetted by politicians who were eager to have huge projects
bringing Federal dollars into their districts. A rivalry with the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which also was in the dam business, though
ostensibly more for flood control than irrigation, exacerbated the
situation.
There were truly great works built, such as Hoover Dam, but also numerous
worthless projects were taken on when all of the "good" projects had
been built. There is a long and fascinating section in the book about how
the rich and powerful in nascent Los Angeles spread tentacles throughout the
Southwest in order to get the water they needed to grow their sleepy
semi-desert town into the sprawling nightmare it became by the end of the 20th century . Reisner
draws astute parallels between the growth of the arid Southwest and the rise
and demise of previous great civilizations that were dependent on irrigation
for growing crops.
The last third of the book covers a number of failed projects, such as the
Teton Dam, and projects that would have failed had they ever been allowed to
start. There is some encouraging news about changes in attitude, both
among the populace and the politicians, which are helping to keep
development in check, but it may well be too little too late. Reisner
explains very well why the damage done by the 60 year orgy of dam building may
take centuries to repair, and how drastic changes to land use will have to
take place before the repairs can even begin.