Book Review: Cadillac Desert- The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner

The pilot for the original Star Trek featured a captain named Christopher Pike instead of the more familiar James T. Kirk. In the episode, we're shown a vision of Pike's home- a glittering, towerlike city in an absurdly lush and beautiful forested valley, in which we're told Pike has a farm. The name of the city? Mojave. In this world, the Mojave desert has become a lush paradise.

It might seem odd to start a review of a history of American water management with an anecdote about a 60s scifi television show that isn't even mentioned in the book, but there's a good reason for it. The greening of the Mojave Desert in Star Trek is precisely indicative of the wider American view towards deserts and water management at the time. America was at the height of dam building, tapping new aquifers, and redirecting rivers. There was a genuine conviction that we not only could but even should irrigate deserts into livable places. In fact, we were already accomplishing it. LA was one of the largest and fastest growing cities in the nation, and the San Joaquin Valley was one of the premier agricultural centers, and it was all accomplished by diverting water from hundreds of miles away. There was no reason at the time to think we couldn't do that all over the West.

And, in retrospect, thinking that way was the greatest act of hubris of American civilization.

With only a single exception, every single desert civilization has, in the end, perished. And, almost universally, they die off for reasons relating to water. Some have their water source dry up, and others over-irrigate, leading to salt being deposited in their soil until it's no longer possible to grow anything in it. Sumeria died this way. To this day, no crops and barely any weeds can grow where the ancient Mesopotamians irrigated their lands. The only desert civilization to escape this fate? Egypt. This is only because their agriculture was dependent on the yearly floods of the Nile, which not only washed away the salts that built up from their small-scale irrigation, but also deposited a thick layer of wet, nutrient rich silt onto their fields.

The Americans who colonized the West completely missed the historical memo, though.

The Glen Canyon Dam, one of the greatest environmental travesties in American history. [Image source]

Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert might have been published in 1986, but it's more relevant than ever. Cadillac Desert tells a story of corruption, political skullduggery, and bribery to shock even veteran news junkies. The lesson that keeps proving itself throughout the book is that "In the West, water flows uphill towards money and power." It's a story of Indian tribes and poor farmers being forced off their land again and again to create reservoirs to benefit rich industrial farmers. It's a story of corrupt government officials and agencies recklessly ignoring the law and commonsense in their sheer obsession for building ever larger dams. It's a story of lives and livelihoods lost to the recklessness of dam builders. It's a story of catastrophic damage done to fragile ecosystems.

Oh, and remember how Egypt has survived longer than every other desert civilization in history? With the construction of the Aswan Dam in the 1960s, they have tamed the floods and droughts that have occasionally hurt them in the past. Their soil has already started salting up. The Nile Delta has begun to erode away. The fisheries in the Delta and immediately past it in the Mediterranean have already begun to vanish. They may have tamed the great river, but they may also have doomed themselves in the long run.

Cadillac Desert is a profoundly cynical, depressing book. Today, hardly any rivers in America remain undammed (or undamned)- around 40,000 dams have been built in our country already. It does end on a note of hope, though. The environmentalist movement and the harsh realities of nature have quelled the dam building fever in America, and started us down a path of more considered and responsible water management. Or, at the very least, the fact that hardly any good dam sites remain has done the trick. Unfortunately, that one note of hope might not be enough- a number of other countries around the world, especially China, have caught that dam building fever. We can hope that someday as a species we can learn to plan in the long term instead of chasing short term profits, but today is not that day.