Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

To charge no more for Colorado River water delivered to Los Angeles or Arizona than was being charged for water from nearby Hoover Dam would be a feat as astonishing as Moses’ bifurcation of the Red Sea. The water would have to come a thousand miles by aqueduct; Hoover water came only a couple of hundred miles, and the immense power output of the dam subsidized the big pump lift to Los Angeles. Hoover Dam was financed with Depression-era interest rates and built by workers earning $4 a day; this project would be financed by Vietnam-era interest rates and built by unionized labor earning at least $6 an hour. There would be little, if any, hydroelectric power produced, but a lot of power might be required for pumping; the water had to go over or through two major mountain ranges! The difference in cost, per acre-foot, ought to be at least 800 percent, probably much more. But, according to Joe Jensen, Stewart Udall was offering it at the same price the MWD paid for water from Lake Mead. Somewhere, there was an immense subsidizing engine, but where?