A History of Water Use in the West Lessons from Cadillac Desert

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A History of Water Use in the WestLessons from
Cadillac Desert
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Dam Builders

• Army Corps of Engineers
• Flood control projects
• Predominantly Eastern states
• Army command led by Chief of Engineers

• Bureau of Reclamation
• Irrigation projects
• Predominantly Western states
• Bureau Commissioner answers to Secretary of the
  Interior

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Settling the American West (the white mans
timeline)

• 1539 Coronado tries and fails to find gold
• 1803 Louisiana Purchase
• 1804 Lewis and Clark expedition begins
• 1806 Pike explores KN, CO
• 1820s-1830s Fur trapping
• 1847 Brigham Young settles in UT
• post-Civil War Railroads promote settling in
  West
• 1869 Powell Geographic Expedition (navigates
  Green and Colorado Rivers)
• 1907 Bureau of Reclamation established within
  Department of the Interior

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1913 Los Angeles Aqueduct opens
223 miles
William Mulholland
map from http//keck.ucsf.edu/krb/imagemap.html
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1922 Colorado River Compact
7.5 million acre-feet to Upper Basin (CO, UT, NM,
WY) 8.5 million acre-feet to Lower Basin (CA, AZ,
NV) 1.5 million acre-feet to Mexcio (Based on
Bureaus estimate of 17.5 million acre-feet
annual flow)
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1935 Hoover Dam completed
726 ft
Black Canyon and the Colorado River, 1922
Upstream face Aerial view
Hoover Dam and Lake Mead
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1942 Grand Coulee Dam (mostly) completed
Grand Coulee Dam
Grand Coulee Dam and FDR Lake
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1935 Central Valley Project undertaken
Map from CSU Stanislaus Endangered Species
Recovery Plan
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1994 Central Arizona Project completed
336 miles from Lake Havasu city (on CA-AZ border)
to Tucson
CAP aqueduct (snagged from Wikipedia, no citation
given)
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1976 Teton Dam failure
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Summary

• Arid West was reclaimed by Bureau of Reclamation
• Earmarks and political favors led to questionable
  decisions about what land was actually irrigable
• Water rights laws in the West prevent much
  revision from status quo
• Without the water, the West could have never
  thrived as it has