Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

“I liked Floyd. I trusted him. I thought he would be loyal to me as secretary.” “I liked Stewart. He was a bad administrator, but he had marvelous instincts. He also had guts. He wouldn’t bite a chainsaw, but he had guts.” “Dominy despised Stewart Udall, and Udall regarded him like a rogue elephant. Dominy used to come storming out of Udall’s office and say, ‘Who does he think he is?! The Commissioner of Reclamation?’” “Dominy was the most able bureaucrat I’ve ever known.” “I was amazed by him. He had the constitution of a double ox. He’d be dead drunk at a party at three A.M. and he’d be testifying at eight-thirty the next morning and you couldn’t tell.” “He was merciless to the people around him. He could be hell on his assistant commissioners. He was horrible to some of the regional directors. If you made a stupid mistake he was all over you and he wouldn’t quit.” “When we went on tours abroad, Dominy was treated like the President of the United States.” “He was a magician with Congress. His friends there would do anything for him. They believed every word he said.” “When he testified he spouted numbers like a computer. He spoke with absolute self-assurance. It was all hogwash. If he didn’t know a number, he made one up.” “When Dominy was ousted the Bureau of Reclamation fell apart. It will never recover. The disarray over there now is ridiculous.” “When you worked for Dominy you were always terrified of the page-eight syndrome. If you handed him a memorandum and page e...