The drought in US south-west is the worst in 1,200 years. It might be here to stay
Kim Heacox
Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox has asked his constituents to pray for rain. Unfortunately, that won’t help
Fri 18 Jun 2021 06.22 EDT
If water is the lifeblood of planet Earth, the American south-west is in big trouble.
John Wesley Powell, the one-armed US army civil war veteran who led the first white expedition down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon – a daring boat run in 1869 – later became an ethnographer who wrote a prescient 1878 government paper titled: Report on the Lands of the Arid Regions of the United States. In it, he unflinchingly described the scarcity of water, and summarized that much of the American south-west, if it must be settled, should be settled lightly and modestly. Overpopulate it, and it will be unforgiving.
Wallace Stegner, the dean of western writers, observed, “As a government scientist, Major Powell was now defying ignorance. He was taking on vested interests and the vested prejudices by which they maintained themselves.”
In short, Powell was a sage.
Nobody listened to him.
Decades later, the US Bureau of Reclamation oversaw the construction of two massive arch-gravity concrete dams on the river: Hoover Dam in the 1930s that impounded Lake Mead; and Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s, that impounded Lake Powell. Some people called them “engineering marvels”. Others said the dams defiled the Michelangelo of American rivers.
They changed everything. Phoenix and Las Vegas grew if water came from the Big Rock Candy Mountain, where the bluebird sings to the lemonade springs and every day is pay day. Just flip the switch; turn on the tap. Or maybe they grew like invasive weeds, sprouting swimming pools, golf courses, lawns – a greedy developer’s dream. Farmers greened the desert. Cattle grazed the valleys. High voltage lines lit up casinos, stadiums and homes, keeping them warm in winter, cool in summer. It felt almost providential, ordained by God.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/16/american-south-west-drought-water
= new reply since forum marked as read
