Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

698 Pages·1993·17.02 MB·English

by  Marc Reisner

Praise for Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner
A F N B C C A
INALIST FOR THE ATIONAL OOK RITICS IRCLE WARD
“Remains the definitive work on the West and its water woes.”
—David Biello, The New York Times Book Review
“A remarkable recitation of hubris and villainy . . . a compelling, cautionary tale,
one that should be required reading for the federal bureaucracy.”
—Lawrence Dietz, Chicago Tribune
“An angry indictment of water depletion in the American West . . . a wake-up
call about destructive dam building, pork-barrel water subsidies, and the general
frittering away of the West’s scarce water resources.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“This book, filled with compelling characters and drama, will help you
understand the improbable accomplishment that is the arid West. . . . [It] will
make you admire the region’s industriousness and invention—but may make you
worry about the wisdom of its ways and about its future, which is what Mr.
Reisner intended.”
—Adam Nagourney, The New York Times
“Remarkably comprehensive and well-written . . . Reisner tells some fascinating
stories and provides some invaluable character insights in understanding water
politics.”
—Dean E. Mann, Los Angeles Times
“Intelligent, provocative, and compulsively readable.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Thoughtful and sprightly . . . Reisner’s book deserves to be widely read by
political leaders, as well as environmentalists and just about anyone interested in
water policies. . . . After reading Cadillac Desert, it is hard to be indifferent
about the importance of water.”
—Guy Halverson, The Christian Science Monitor
“A revealing, absorbing, often amusing and alarming report on where billions of
[taxpayer’s] dollars have gone—and where a lot more are going . . . [Reisner]
has put the story together in trenchant form.”
—Gladwin Hill, The New York Times Book Review
“The scale of this book is as staggering as that of the Hoover Dam. Beautifully
written and meticulously researched, it spans our century-long effort to moisten
the arid West.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“In his love for the region, its land, water, plants, wildlife, and people, Reisner
and his book give us an informed legacy that should be valued by dwellers of
California and the West. . . . His call to action spurred a generation to careers in
environmental science. It also inspired journalists, outdoor enthusiasts, and
citizens.”
—Erik Skindrud, The Sacramento Bee
“Reisner brings both passion and hard investigative prowess to Cadillac Desert,
the telling of how an Eden was created from an inhospitable desert, and how
temporary that dream is proving to be in the face of implacable future. . . . The
book is so well written that it reads like a novel, all the characters come alive in
their own divergent beliefs, and the spirit of the lost land hovers over all like
some powerful ghost.”
—Edith Hamilton, St. Petersburg Times
“Cadillac Desert details the powerful and sometimes baleful influence the
Bureau of Reclamation has had on the West—pushing it inexorably toward an
edge from which, sooner or later, it is bound to fall off. A long book, packed
with facts, Cadillac Desert is not going to be bedside reading for the millions;
but millions ought to read it, because in its pages is visible the shape of a future
that we have stubbornly refused to foresee.”
—Wallace Stegner
“By now it’s an old saying that in the American West, ‘water flows uphill toward
money.’ With passion and persuasion Cadillac Desert reiterates the history of a
fragile oasis civilization—startlingly, it is our own—and reckons the towering
costs, social and ecological as well as financial, of turning rivers into
computerized aqueducts. In this strongly written book, Marc Reiner makes plain
that in the irremediably dry West, our thirst to build may yet be our downfall.”
—Ivan Doig
PENGUIN BOOKS
CADILLAC DESERT
Marc Reisner (1948–2000) was, in Jim Harrison’s words, “in the upper echelon
of those defending the environment with conscience, intelligence and energy.”
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Reisner was a 1970 graduate of Earlham College in
Indiana. A staff writer for the Natural Resources Defense Council from 1972 to
1979, Reisner received an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship in 1979 to
investigate water resources in the West. His book Cadillac Desert: The
American West and Its Disappearing Water (1986) was acclaimed as the
“definitive work on the West’s water crisis” (Newsweek) and went on to be
nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Reisner was also author of
Game Wars: The Undercover Pursuit of Wildlife Poachers (1991) and the
posthumously published A Dangerous Place: California’s Unsettling Fate.
Lawrie Mott, formerly an environmental health scientist with the Natural
Resources Defense Council, lives in a Bay Area county that receives all its water
from local supplies. She cowrote Pesticide Alert: A Guide to Pesticides in Fruits
and Vegetables and numerous NRDC reports, including “Intolerable Risk,”
focusing on the greater vulnerability in children to pesticide residues in their
food. From Marc Reisner, her late husband, she learned about water in the West
at their dinner table and during long drives through western states. Mott received
her B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz and her M.S. from Yale.
ALSO BY MARC REISNER
A Dangerous Place: California’s Unsettling Fate
Game Wars: The Undercover Pursuit of Wildlife Poachers

PENGUIN BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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New York, New York 10014
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First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin Inc. 1986
Published in Penguin Books 1987
This revised and updated edition published in Penguin Books 1993
This edition with a new postscript by Lawrie Mott published 2017
Copyright © 1986, 1993 by Marc Reisner Maps copyright © 1986 by Viking Penguin Inc.
Postscript copyright © 2017 by Lawrie Mott Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity,
encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an
authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or
distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin
to continue to publish books for every reader.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Talking Columbia,” words and
music by Woody Guthrie. TRO—© Copyright 1961 and 1963 Ludlow Music, Inc., New York, N.Y. Used
by permission.
Maps by David Lindroth ISBN 9780140178241 (paperback) ISBN 9781440672828 (ebook)
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Reisner, Marc
CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Cadillac desert
Reprint. Originally published, New York, N.Y., U.S.A.
Viking, 1986.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
1. Irrigation—Government policy—West (U.S.)—History. 2. Water resources development—Government
policy—West (U.S.)—History. 3. Corruption (in politics)—West (U.S.)—History.
I. Title.
[HD1739.A17R45 1987]
333.91’00978
87.7602
Cover design: Lynn Buckley
Cover photographs (detail): © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto / Howard
Greenberg Gallery and Bryce Wolkowitz, New York
Version_4
For Konrad and Else Reisner