The money has gone into Federal water projects in the Western states - some of the projects awesome, some scandalous but all with an uncertain future. On where billions of their dollars have gone - and where a lot more are going. It's a revealing, absorbing, often amusing and alarming report IT'S unlikely that most taxpayers will read '' Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water,'' but they should. Section 7, Column 1 Book Review DeskīY GLADWIN HILL Gladwin Hill is the former national environmental correspondent of The New York Times.ĬADILLAC DESERT The American West and Its Disappearing Water. September 14, 1986, Sunday, Late City Final Edition This edition includes a new postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, that updates Western water issues over the last two decades, including the long-term impact of climate change and how the region can prepare for the future.The New York Times: Book Review Search Article Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden-an Eden that may only be a mirage. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West.

He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water.

'The definitive work on the West's water crisis.' -Newsweek He worried that the West’s success with irrigation could be a mirage - that it took water for granted and didn’t appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it.” – Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times, January 20,2023 “I’ve been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remain in the grip of a severe drought.

Cadillac desert book