Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

This chapter focuses on two political administrations, Jimmy Carter’s and Ronald Reagan’s, and their effect on water distribution policy. Carter, from the start of his presidency, declared war on the “courtesy” system (also called the pork barrel by its critics), which is the business of trading favors in Congress. Carter wanted to balance the federal budget, an ambitious goal considering the country’s debt was approaching a trillion dollars. One of the first items Carter wanted to cut was funding for all water projects. This hit list leaked and caused a massive uproar in Congress. To circumvent this list, the House Appropriations Committee introduced a public works appropriations bill that included most of the projects Carter wanted cut and added funding for new projects. Carter eventually signed the bill because “he had underestimated Congress’s passion for dams and overestimated his ability to move the rest of his legislative program forward” (321). This was not the only time during his presidency that Carter signed bills that went against his water reform ideas to help other legislative issues pass.

Carter tried to enforce the Reclamation Act. An investigation by his administration found that most violators were California and Arizona farmers. When Carter’s administration tried to enforce the law and curb these violations, growers in California managed to lobby for an amendment to the act in the early 1980s. This amendment raised the acreage limit to 960 and removed all leasing and residency restrictions. The growers, in return, paid (although this is questionable) the actual cost for water delivered to lands beyond the new acreage limit.

Reagan also tried to reform policy related to water projects. For example, his budget director wanted to recover 100% of both the capital and the operating costs of new navigation projects from those who benefited. There were also discussions about making states pay larger shares of flood-control dam costs, something even Carter had not suggested. The Reagan administration also wanted to see states contribute to Reclamation projects from the start. Under Reagan, Congress did not pass any new authorization bills due to the federal government’s debt and Reagan threatening to veto such bills. Reisner notes that the single greatest blow to the pork barrel was “the very thing it helped produce: an uncontrollable tide of national debt” (331).

In Chapter 10, Reisner looks at the history of California’s State Water Project. The project’s origins lay with the San Joaquin Valley, which, by the late 1950s, was one of the most agriculturally productive places on the planet. The valley also had a massive issue: Its groundwater was being chronically depleted due to agriculture. Rather than regulating groundwater pumping, the state decided to build “a huge project to bring in more water from somewhere else” (342). The project was based on deception. The Governor of California, Edmund (Pat) G. Brown, knew that voters, particularly in Southern California, were unlikely to vote in favor of the project due to its cost. As such, Brown lied about the cost, helping to get the necessary votes.

Brown was also dishonest about how much water could be purchased through the initial bonds. Most Californians thought they were purchasing four million acre-feet, when the project’s initial facilities could only deliver about half that amount. By underfunding the bond issue, Brown failed to consider the effects of inflation. To deliver the rest of the project’s water acreage would cost two to five times more than the original bond.

When California’s Department of Water Resources began to circulate contracts for water from the project, few farmers in the San Joaquin Valley were willing to sign them. The irrigation water was barely subsidized. It would cost between $25 and $45 per acre-foot compared to Bureau water, which was never more than $7.50. In many places, you could still pump groundwater for $15 per acre-foot. The farmers wanted the water, but only if the price was the “energy cost of delivery” (367). They felt this price was reasonable since it was surplus water. Los Angeles would not need its share for years to come. In the end, the project would not save Los Angeles if there was ever a serious drought. Instead, it enabled growers to continue using hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of surplus water that cost them almost nothing. This enabled many growers to expand their acreage beyond a level that is sustainable without the surplus water.