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Several dry years left the Sierra Nevada without snow to
water the nation’s breadbasket. Photos courtesy of NASA.

January 18, 2013 January 18, 2014

dynamiting the aqueduct and diverting the Los Angeles. Power from the Hoover Dam lights
river, but it was too late. America's Switzerland up Las Vegas and hundreds of other cities and
transformed into a dusty desert, its water stolen towns throughout the West.
"fair and square" by the Angelenos. Most impressively, the river's water has
The California Water Wars, as the Owens transformed hundreds of square miles of
Valley saga and related conflicts are known, were blazing desert into some of the richest farmland
only the beginning of the nasty water disputes on the continent. The Imperial Valley, situated
that have come to define the West. As tensions at the southern tip of California, and its twin
between competing water interests reached a Mexicali Valley across the border, are dry even
breaking point, the federal government stepped by desert definitions. Receiving less than
in and established the Bureau of Reclamation, two inches of rain per year, the region could
a major goal of which was to dam Western hardly grow tumbleweeds before the Colorado
rivers to satisfy competing water demands. The was diverted to provide so much water that
water provided from these government dams is it has not consistently reached the sea since
heavily subsidized; some farming districts pay the 1960s. The Imperial Valley has been an
as little as ten to fifteen dollars per acre-foot irrigation mecca since 1900. Los Angeles and
(326,000 gallons), an astonishing bargain in San Diego, by contrast, only received Colorado
such arid country. River water in the forties, and Central Arizona
In 1936 the Bureau of Reclamation had to wait another thirty years to get its
completed the mighty Hoover Dam along the share. The chronological order of water rights
Colorado River. No other dam and river illustrate determines whose taps will get cut off first
as vividly the water problems faced by the West when a drought hits—a fact which could ignite
today. For a river of its size and grandeur—1,450 a twenty-first century water war between
miles long, and responsible for carving the Arizona and California.
Grand Canyon—the Colorado’s flow is only one This is the crux of the issue: farmers were first
twenty-fifth the size of the Mississippi. Yet from in time, first in right. Since agriculture accounts
Wyoming to Sonora it serves as the lifeline of for 80 percent of the West's water consumption,
seven American and two Mexican states. the order of conservation during a dry year
What humans have done to the Colorado should be obvious, taking water first from the
defies imagination. It supplies water to fifty thirstiest and lowest-value crops, like hay. Yet
million people and irrigates most of the because of prior appropriation, the order is
nation's winter produce. Aqueducts pump reversed: the five million people of Phoenix and
water hundreds of miles across deserts and up Tucson could get their Colorado River water cut
thousand-foot mountain grades to quench the off before the Imperial Valley, which not only
thirst of enormous desert cities like Phoenix and uses three to four times more water on average,
but also wastes a good portion through leaky

1 2 TZU CHI USA SUMMER 2015