The American West and Its Disappearing Water

Cadillac Desert:
The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner
Reviewed by Joanie Quinn

When Henry James said that the two most beautiful words in the English language are "summer afternoon," he might have been thinking about curling up with a book in some shady spot.

Most likely, he was NOT thinking of curling up with a book that tells the story of the pauperization of small farmers by the government agency created to protect them, the decimation of our aquifers, the wholesale appropriation of the river systems of the west to enable huge corporations to grow water-hungry crops in deserts with water subsidized by the taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars, the irrigitation-induced salting up of some of the most productive farmland in the west and the ruin of millions of acres of wildlife habitat.

But (sorry, dude), Henry would be wrong. Cadillac Desert is just the book to curl up with this summer.

The summer swelter helps — as you reach for that nice glass of ice water and hit the "on" switch for the swamp cooler — you understand that we live in a desert and that we probably wouldn't want to be around here without certain amenities.

It's dry. It's hot. And that certain amenity we really wouldn't want to be without is… water.

And yet, the chilling conclusion of this book is that water is precisely the amenity that is disappearing, more rapidly than our much-cherished petrochemicals.

As the west was settled, it was considered scientific fact that "rain follows the plow;" that rainfall, as the pioneers crossed the 100th meridian that marks the end of land that can be reliably farmed without irrigation, will increase as a result of plowing the land.

That uncooperative "fact" has been replaced by Reisner's construct that water (contrary to the expectations of physics) flows uphill… toward money and power.

This has proved more enduringly true, but its limits are being increasingly tested as irrigators and developers have had to set their sights on increasingly distant water (yes, there have been discussions of diverting rivers from Canada).

In recent weeks, as the power crisis in California fills the headlines, it is interesting to think about some of the collateral problems created by the massive diversion of water described by Reisner.

The 444-mile California Aqueduct which begins at Oroville Dam, and carries water to cotton fields in the San Joaquin Valley and the burgeoning population in southern California has to cross the Tehachapi Mountains to the north of L.A.

This book is a must for everyone who lives in the west. Even if you think you know a lot about the topic, it will challenge your assumptions about the sustainability of large populations west of the 100th meridian, and of an economy where 90% of the tomatoes grown for processing come from the California desert, which is living on borrowed water and borrowed time.