Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

There were legitimate reasons, of course, to build a fair number of those thousands of dams. Hydropower obviously was one; the Columbia dams helped prevent the horror of Nazism from blackening the entire world. Some new irrigation projects made economic sense, as late as the 1940s and 1950s (though virtually none did after then). The Tennessee and Red rivers were prone to destructive floods, as was the Columbia—as were many rivers throughout the country. A better solution, in many cases, would have been to discourage development in floodplains, but the country—least of all the Congress—wasn’t interested in that. For a dam, whether or not it made particularly good sense, whether or not it decimated a salmon fishery or drowned a gorgeous stretch of wild river, was a bonanza to the constituents of the Congressman in whose district it was located—especially the engineering and construction firms that became largely dependent on the government for work. The whole business was like a pyramid scheme—the many (the taxpayers) were paying to enrich the few—but most members of Congress figured that if they voted for everyone else’s dams, someday they would get a dam, too.