Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

In his memorandum, Jensen merely hinted at an answer; it may have sounded so good he didn’t believe it himself. “The cost of such Colorado River supply,” he wrote, “is to be paid out of the first power revenues. The remaining power revenues would be available for assisting in the payment of the main program or project, and water revenues would pay part of the cost.” Apparently, Jensen was promised by Udall and Dominy that the power revenues generated by the dams that would be part of the import scheme were going to subsidize the price of water before they even began to pay back the cost of the facilities! Before the dams were paid for; before the aqueducts were paid for; before the tunnels were paid for; before the siphons and canals were paid for—before a penny went to all of that, the power revenues were going to go directly into the pockets of water consumers in southern and central California and Arizona, subsidizing the price of their water. How else could Udall be promising the Southwest water—water that probably wouldn’t be available until the 1980s—at 1935 prices? If this was what it took to get the Central Arizona Project built—and Jensen, a leading foe of that project, did not say an unkind word about it in his memorandum—Udall and Dominy were just about prepared to give the water away.