Arid Ambition - Part 5: The Mirage of Augmentation and the Looming End

The quest to conquer the American West transformed the landscape, leaving behind monuments of concrete and a history defined by political manipulation. Massive engineering works, like Hoover Dam, were built with such exquisite care they might outlast skyscrapers and cathedrals. Yet, the ultimate price of this conquest was the illusion of limitless water. The civilization established in the arid West is less a permanent domain and more accurately described as a precarious beachhead. The odds of sustaining this highly engineered civilization remain low.

The fundamental error was laid down early in the Colorado River Compact of 1922. The compact negotiators relied on streamflow measurements that indicated an average annual flow of 17.5 million acre-feet (21.6 billion m³). However, the Colorado River had been on a binge during the measurement period, with flows returning to average or above-average levels three out of every four years. Raymond Hill, a distinguished hydrologic engineer, later revealed the river’s actual average discharge since 1930 had been only 11.7 million acre-feet (14.4 billion m³). This discrepancy of nearly six million acre-feet (7.4 billion m³) meant the river was hopelessly overallocated from the moment the agreement was signed.

The Bureau of Reclamation (BoR) knew the river was running a chronic deficit. Consultants estimated that even dividing the shortage equally would leave the Upper and Lower Basins with only 6.3 million acre-feet (7.8 billion m³) each, after accounting for substantial evaporation losses. Despite this, states proceeded with massive projects based on the promise of water that did not exist. Arizona politicians, including Congressman John Rhodes and Senator Carl Hayden, frequently used apocalyptic imagery. They warned that without more water, the state was doomed to “return to desert, to dust,” or simply “perish”.

The result was a frantic race to lock down every last drop. The Upper Basin states feared that fast-growing California would “borrow” their unused allocations, making it politically impossible ever to retrieve them. This paranoia motivated the swift, if questionable, authorization of upstream projects like the Colorado River Storage Project. Even after seventy years of development, the Colorado is so overused that only a burbling trickle reaches its dried-up delta at the Gulf of California, and then only during wet years. The Colorado River is now the most legislated, most debated, and most litigated river in the world.

The Mining of Fossil Water

The crisis of surface water scarcity was mirrored by a quiet catastrophe occurring beneath the plains. In California, there is absolutely no regulation over groundwater pumping. Major landholders, including corporate entities like Exxon, Tenneco, and Getty Oil, fiercely oppose control. These entities operate immense farms reliant on deep wells.

In the High Plains, where farming relies on the Ogallala Aquifer, states did regulate pumping. However, the states decided to regulate the water out of existence. The Ogallala is the largest discrete aquifer in the world, yet it is also the fastest-disappearing. The region, once plagued by the 1930s Dust Bowl, became rich and fertile by exploiting this finite resource.

The high plains agricultural economy now operates as a mining industry, not a traditional farming industry. The withdrawal rate is equivalent to the entire flow of the Colorado River, about 14 million acre-feet (17.3 billion m³) annually. In West Texas, farmers withdraw four to six feet (1.2 to 1.8 m) of water per year. Natural replenishment adds only about half an inch (1.3 cm). This planned recklessness guarantees the aquifer’s exhaustion within thirty to a hundred years.

Texas A&M University projected that the West Texas aquifer would decline to 44 million acre-feet (54.3 billion m³) by 2015. This decrease would cause irrigated acreage to fall from its mid-sixties peak of 3.5 million acres (1.4 million ha) to just 125,000 acres (50,586 ha). Total agricultural value in the region would diminish by 80 percent. With farmers highly leveraged by debt, a rapid change in pumping viability could lead to a social calamity. The massive number of shelterbelt trees planted decades earlier has already been removed to make way for pivot irrigation, setting the stage for renewed environmental disaster.

Salinity, Silt, and Sumerian Destiny

Beyond the political and financial collapse, the dams face inescapable physical limits imposed by desert hydrology. Two ancient, corrosive ailments threaten irrigated civilization: siltation and salinity.

The water used for irrigation percolates through the highly saline or alkaline soils common in the West. On rivers like the Colorado and the Platte, the same water is used up to eighteen times over as it flows downstream. Each cycle adds salts and compounds. Furthermore, when water evaporates from reservoirs and fields, the moisture returns to the sky, but the salts remain concentrated below. Hydrologist Arthur Pillsbury estimated that of 120 million acre-feet (148 billion m³) applied to American crops in 1980, 90 million acre-feet (111 billion m³) were lost to evaporation and transpiration. The remaining 30 million acre-feet (37 billion m³) contained virtually all the original salt load.

This process renders the water increasingly toxic. Some small Colorado tributaries flowing from the Piceance Basin contain salt concentrations of up to ninety thousand parts per million. By the time the Colorado River reaches Mexico, its water is almost illegal due to high salinity levels. The accumulation of salts in the root zones is projected to drastically increase the amount of land going out of production.

This problem brought down nearly all ancient irrigated civilizations. Egypt, the sole exception, avoided this fate for millennia due to the Nile’s predictable annual floods. The floodwaters flushed salts back into the Mediterranean and deposited fresh, rich silt. However, when Egypt built the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, the floods stopped. The consequence has been the rapid accumulation of salts, forcing the country to install expensive drainage systems. Egypt is now faced with the universal problem of keeping salts from accumulating. Former Reclamation Commissioner Floyd Dominy, hired to consult there, called the situation a result of “Goddamned crazy Russians,” saying anyone should have foreseen the effects.

The dams themselves face an equally terminal problem: siltation. Hydrologists describe dams as “wasting assets” because their function dies when the reservoir fills with mud. Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam, was filled with more silt in thirty-five years than 98 percent of American reservoirs hold in water. Once the reservoir is full of mud, removing the silt is prohibitively expensive. The dams will simply become impassive plates of concrete sitting across deep canyons filled with solid earth.

The Grandiose Plans for Rescue

The looming certainty of failure spurred planners to draft extravagant schemes for water augmentation. These plans were based on the delusional assumption that the nation would spend billions to maintain the unsustainable settlements.

In 1971, the Bureau of Reclamation (BoR) released a proposal to divert six million acre-feet from the lower Mississippi River. This artificial river would be pumped uphill a distance of one thousand miles and gain four thousand feet in elevation to save the High Plains irrigation economy. Pumping 16.5 trillion pounds of water required colossal energy. The plan required six nuclear plants for power. The BoR calculated the massive $20 billion (1971 dollars) project would return only twenty-seven cents in economic productivity for every dollar invested. The benefit-cost ratio was a disastrous .27 to 1.

The most majestic concept, however, was the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA). Conceived by the Ralph M. Parsons Corporation, a giant engineering firm in Pasadena, NAWAPA proposed redirecting massive rivers in Alaska and Canada. The plan included dams in British Columbia up to 1,700 feet high. The Yukon and Tanana rivers would be pumped in reverse and funneled into the Rocky Mountain Trench, a natural reservoir 500 miles long storing 400 million acre-feet of water. This water would then serve the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, and the American Southwest. Proponents claimed NAWAPA would produce 100,000 megawatts of clean hydroelectricity. By the early 1980s, the estimated cost had doubled to $200 billion.

NAWAPA received passionate reception in the West. Its champions believed it was not a matter of whether, but when, the project would be built. Canadian politicians and citizens viewed the plan with suspicion and outrage. They worried about the unprecedented destruction and the arrogance of their southern neighbors.

The Turning Tide of Economics

The political commitment to perpetual subsidies is finally breaking under the weight of these impossible costs. The federal irrigation program, built on an interest exemption that often amounted to a subsidy of 90 cents on the dollar, made the West the nation’s most durable welfare state.

President Jimmy Carter challenged this system in 1977. He created a “hit list” of wasteful dams and irrigation projects. One project on the list offered only five cents of economic benefits for every taxpayer dollar invested. Western political reaction was “icily hostile”, forcing Carter into a full retreat that severely damaged his presidency. Western governors and congressional leaders demanded the projects be funded, arguing that Washington must provide the economic impetus.

Today, however, the immense cost of rescue is becoming undeniable. The Peripheral Canal in California, an essential part of the State Water Project expansion, was estimated to cost $11.6 billion in 1980. Interest would add another $12 billion. Voters overwhelmingly rejected the bond issue. The cost of developing new water sources is simply astronomical. The proposed Narrows Dam in Colorado had an unofficial 1984 cost estimate near $500 million. This translates to a development cost of $14,500 per acre-foot. Farmers typically pay only $7.50 or less per acre-foot, meaning taxpayers bear the immense burden.

This unsustainable model is forcing a change in perspective. Urban areas realize the efficiency discrepancy between agricultural and industrial water use. The Metropolitan Water District calculated that one thousand acre-feet of water used in high-tech industry creates sixteen thousand jobs. The same amount used on pasture farms creates only eight jobs.

Old political alliances are dissolving in the face of this reality. Southern California, the historical water conqueror, now schemes with environmentalists. Lawsuits have forced urban centers to reverse course. Los Angeles, notorious for its water theft, was compelled to reduce diversions from streams feeding Mono Lake. The city also returned water to the Owens River, allowing it to flow again for the first time in almost half a century.

The West is slowly being dragged back toward sustainability. It must stop trying to conquer nature and start living within the limits predicted by John Wesley Powell over a century ago. The odds of sustaining the current beachhead are low. The question remains whether American civilization can keep what it built.

The dream of inexhaustible water, nurtured by dams and subsidies, is proving to be a mirage shimmering on the receding horizon of public solvency. The civilization of the American West, built on sand and political promise, must now confront its final accounting, where physics ultimately supersedes politics.

The immense effort to sustain human life in the arid West mirrors a complex machine designed to defy gravity and natural law. While the machine runs, it provides comfort and abundance; when it inevitably breaks, the structure built atop it—however grand—is left stranded in the inhospitable terrain it failed to master.