Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

Who persuaded the IRS to revoke the Sierra Club’s tax-deductible status is a question still debated today. Brower is convinced that Congressman Morris Udall, Stewart’s brother, was behind it. He insists Udall even confessed to him once in an unguarded moment. Others suspect Stewart. Everyone wanted to lay the blame with Dominy, but private memoranda from Dominy’s files suggest that he was as perplexed as everyone else; he wanted to locate the culprit so he could congratulate him. It was, obviously, a purely political strike. Other tax-deductible groups were at least as active in trying to influence legislation as the Sierra Club, and nothing happened to them. Whoever was responsible, the Sierra Club suddenly found itself tilling fund-raising soil as dry as the West’s, and had a close brush with bankruptcy. Brower, for his part, would soon find himself without a job, fired by the club’s board of directors for fiduciary irresponsibility. But, in the end, none of it was to make much difference. The ads had been published; the public was outraged; the Grand Canyon dams were doomed to defeat. Everyone knew it except Floyd Dominy, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Colorado Basin states.