Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

In an economic sense, what the backers of the Pacific Southwest Water Plan were proposing was unprecedented. It violated every principle of economics, even the fast and loose principles of Reclamation economics. If the lion’s share of the power revenues were going to subsidize not only irrigation but municipal water costs—municipal water whose revenues had usually subsidized irrigation in the past—the project could not possibly be paid back for hundreds of years, if ever. The cost, which had to be in the many billions, would simply be borne on the backs of the taxpayers. From a national perspective, it was a stunningly ill-conceived idea; but from a regional perspective, it was a wonderful idea—an offer none of the basin states could refuse. At a price guaranteed to be affordable—not only affordable but dirt cheap—the yield of the Colorado River would be increased by one-half. Oregon would get a slew of new irrigation projects, as would Nevada. California’s irrigators would be relieved of their most desperate worry, the self-inflicted groundwater overdraft. And it could all be accomplished by taking a mere 10 percent of the flow of the Columbia River and turning it southward.