Two interesting questions are raised by Dominy’s response. One is whether he really had enough influence with the Sacramento Bee to enlist it in an orchestrated campaign to perfume the Bureau’s reputation. One also wonders what he had in mind when he spoke of Reclamation projects “enhancing” fish and wildlife habitat in the Central Valley. By the mid-1960s, nearly 90 percent of the valley’s wetlands habitat was gone, almost entirely because of irrigation farming, and wetlands were by far the most important natural feature in all its five-hundred-mile length; the valley was once the winter
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