Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

The whole state thrives, even survives, by moving water from where it is, and presumably isn’t needed, to where it isn’t, and presumably is needed. No other state has done as much to fructify its deserts, make over its flora and fauna, and rearrange the hydrology God gave it. No other place has put as many people where they probably have no business being. There is no place like it anywhere on earth. Thirty-one million people (more than the population of Canada), an economy richer than all but seven nations’ in the world, one third of the table food grown in the United States—and none of it remotely conceivable within the preexisting natural order.

China might have this beat by now

What few people, including some Californians, know is that agriculture uses 81 percent of all the water in this most populous and industrialized of states.

80%factcheck

Edmonston’s scheme was mesmerizing. The largest water project ever built by a state or local government was New York City’s Delaware water system, completed during World War II. The Delaware Aqueduct was eighty-five miles long and entirely underground—by far the longest hard-rock tunnel in the world. But the California Water Plan, in its first phase alone, contemplated the movement of four times more water over a distance six times as long. What was even more startling was that most of the water would go to irrigation. The Delaware Aqueduct had left New York, a Babylon of wealth, up to its ears in debt. But since each average household paid around a hundred dollars an acre-foot for water, and because the city had a huge commercial and industrial sector sharing the cost, the bonds would be paid off unless the city, for some reason, saw its growth curve go drastically into reverse. In the mid-1950s, the most that irrigation farmers could pay for water was, by a generous average, about $15 an acre-foot—less than a fifth as much as New Yorkers paid. And New York City’s water arrived by gravity; California’s farmers would have to pay for several hundred vertical feet of pumping, and Los Angeles would have to buy water pumped more than three thousand feet if the aqueduct went over instead of through the Tehachapi Mountains. (The United Western Investigation had already concluded that tunneling was too risky because of earthquake hazards.) How could anyone afford it?

What passed for an answer provides an insight into the thinking of Edmonston and the water lobby and a good many politicians at the time. It was also as remarkable a statement as any certifiably sane person ever made. “It is believed that the cost of water will not be a limiting factor in ultimate development of the water resources of California,” Edmonston’s report read. “It is indicated that urban communities will always be able and willing to pay the cost of water to meet their municipal needs. Furthermore, it is considered probable that under pressure of future demands for agricultural produce, the water necessary for greatly expanded irrigation development will be provided, at whatever cost may be required. . . . Many works financially infeasible today will undoubtedly be financed and constructed in the future” (emphasis added).

If anyone found such a statement preposterous—it was really like saying that, because of population pressure, we were bound to settle Mars—he kept his opinions to himself. The nearest thing to a publicly expressed doubt was the somewhat timorous suggestion of the Stanford Research Institute, which was asked to comment on the report, that a “definite price policy” would be required for “more realistic estimates of probable water sales,” and that these, in turn, might well decide “the financial outcome of the project”—that is, whether or not it would end in the greatest bankruptcy of all time. The prevalent mood was more accurately reflected in a remark by the director of California’s new Department of Water Resources, Harvey Banks—a remark he used in a great many of the speeches he ga...

Brown knew that a lot of voters will vote reflexively against any bond issue, even one to hire police and build jails in the midst of a crime wave. They would rather not pay taxes and buy guns, rather not pay taxes and dig wells. This was especially true in southern California, the home turf of the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby. Northern Californians were sure to be violently opposed, even if they were promised some of the water. Northern Californians had always resisted sending their water to Los Angeles. Between metropolitan San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, Oakland, Stockton, and Contra Costa County, there were four million people and at least a million voters (out of three million who might vote statewide) who were certain to go against him. Those votes had to be counterbalanced by “yes” votes in southern California. But when those good Republican migrants from the Middle West down there saw how much the project would cost, they would blanch. How could he possibly win? There was only one way, Brown decided. It was to lie. “Lie” is a strong word, but in this case it is advised, because one day Pat Brown would all but admit it himself.