Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

“New Age” politicians who strive to disassociate themselves from the old Left or the old Right seem to fall into the same old habits where the pork barrel is concerned. In 1984, Senator Gary Hart of Colorado ran for president as a neoliberal and a self-proclaimed expert on how to trim the federal budget; he also supported, consistently, a couple of billion dollars’ worth of unbuilt Colorado reclamation and salinity-control projects, most of them sporting costs far greater than benefits. Former Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr., of California flew to London at his own expense to attend the funeral of his hero E. F. Schumacher, who wrote Small Is Beautiful, then returned to promote what could turn out to be the most expensive single public-works project ever built, the expansion of the California Water Project.