in his magisterial Cadillac Desert, “was arnhalf-century rampage of dam-buildingrnand irrigation development which, in allrnprobability, went far beyond anythingrnPowell would have liked.” It was alsornthe ingenious Rube Goldberg system ofrnreservoirs, aqueducts, canals, and tunnelsrnwithout which half or more—rnperhaps much more—of the presentrnpopulation west of the Mississippi Riverrnwould be living east of it instead. Unlikernthe South of a century and a half ago,rnthe West is only by artifice a selfsustainingrnregion; only after the Bureaurnof Reclamation and the Armv Corps ofrnEngineers have done their worst is itrncapable of feeding itself (thanks to California,rnwhich is 110 longer, culturallyrnand politically speaking, a Westernrnstate). Take out its water system and itrnwould starve to death. At least its citiesrnwould, hi particular the cities of SouthernrnCalifornia and Arizona.rnTo this extent the population of thernWest is indeed living beyond its means,rnfor which it has substituted Easternrnhandouts. Clever of the government,rncynics and conspiratorialists might say:rnexactly what was required to bind allrnthose millions of square miles, rich inrnoil and gas and minerals and timber, potentialrnbombing ranges and concentrationrncamps for Medicare recipients, tornthe federal treasury. The truth is thatrnWashington, for the past nine decades,rnhas dedicated itself to creating water welfarites,rnwilling or unwilling, as deliberatelyrnand ruthlessly as it has made crackrnand food-stamp addicts for the pastrnthree. Far better than the beneficiariesrnof its programs, it knew what it was do-rn’ ^ ‘ V irnLET US KNOW BEFORErnYOU GO !rnTo assure uninterrupted delivei-y ofrnCHRONICLES please notify us inrnadvance. Send change of addressrnon this form with the maiUngrnlabel from your latest issue ofrnCHRONICLES to:rnSubscription DepartmentrnCHRONICLESrnRO. Box 800rnMount Morris, Illinois 61054rnNAMErnNEW ADDRESSrning—rolling pork-barrels and buyingrnvotes; more than they, it bears the moralrnresponsibility for their corruption. For 90rnyears the federals have paid farmers torngrow crops where no crops should berngrown, subsidized ranchers to graze theirrnanimals in numbers for which permitsrnought never to have been written. NowrnWashington, responding to pressurernfrom Eastern skiers, backpackers, mountaineers,rnbeautiful people, and secondhomernbuilders, has changed its mind: itrnwants the West back, for itself. And forrnmillions of other people transplanted tornthe exploding cities of the VVest wherernthey seek “a better qualitv of life”—andrnsoak up the critical paucity of water thatrnremains here.rnA national administration sincerelvrnconcerned for the Western “environment”rnwould pay relatively little attentionrnto the sheep and cattle men, thernwheat and alfalfa growers of the RockvrnMountain region, and concentrate bothrnits attention and its bullv-boy methodsrnon the corporate CEOs busily relocatingrnthemselves and their employees fromrnthe East and from California to intermountainrnmetropolitan areas that asrnmuch as 25 or 30 ears ago vere alreadvrnstraining their fragile desert surroundingsrnand intricate natural water svstems,rnwhich, in the basin-and-range West, mavrnbe only a few miles away. It is the citiesrnthat are priniariK’ responsible for creatingrnenvironmental distress, but nobody hasrnever dared tell Americans where the’rnma’ and may not live, not even whenrntheir choice must be subsidized by tensrnof billions of dollars of public moneyrnfrom somewhere else. The result, in ourrneomplacentlv hubristic society, is a municipalityrnof 12 million people trapped inrna strip of desert between the PacificrnOcean and a mountain range and entirelyrndependent for its survival on waterrnelectrically sucked and pumped throughrnaqueducts arriving from hundreds ofrnmiles away. The Colorado River system,rnso oversubscribed by water-rights holdersrnthat it enters the Gulf of California as arnliteral trickle, is the victim not of irrigatorsrnin the largely rural Upper Basin statesrnof Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado butrnof the downstream megalopoli of LasrnVegas, Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego, andrnLos Angeles, of agriculture in southernrnArizona, and of industrial agriculture inrnthe great valleys of Southern Californiarn(most of it serving as a lucrative taxrnwrite-off for Union Pacific, PrudentialrnLife, and other corporate behemoths)rnthat are draining and destroying a watershedrnencompassing eight states. Days afterrnhe was fired from the BLM, Jim Bacarnsneered that the Clinton administrationrnhad backed off from its grazing reformrnprogram after being confronted byrn”29,000 [grazing] leaseholders.” Myrnguess is John Wesley Powell, prophetrnthat he was, would have understood thatrnthe problem todav is not 29,000 leaseholders;rnit is two million Denverites, arnhalf-million Albuquerqueans, one millionrnSalt Lakers, two million Phoenixites,rnthree-quarters of a million Tucsonians,rnand 12 million Angelenos. It is the 40-rnstory bank towers, the shopping malls,rnsuburbs, highwas- overpasses, industrialrnparks, ski resorts; the hundreds of thousandsrnof quality-of-life seekers and thernmillions of retired-at-fifty-with-toomuch-rnmoney types whose membershiprndues give the AARP the clout and ferocityrnof the Bosnian Serbs.rnWashington, D.C., and the Americanrnnon-West are apparenth under a misapprehension:rnthat the salvation of Westernrnfederal lands lies in a combination ofrnboom time for the Western cities andrnbankruptcy for the small indigenousrnland-based rural economics. In fact, thisrnis a prescription for disaster. In spite ofrnthe excesses of the Old West, which evenrnmany ranchers—by nature a stubbornrnand habit-bound breed—concede mustrnbe controlled and tempered, it never wasrnand is not now fundamentally incompatiblernwith environmental health andrnstability. But the New West is incompatible:rnprobably it is fatal. Regional environmentalistsrnunderstand this, unlikernthe $87,000-a-year boys at EPA headquartersrnin Washington: Ed Marston,rnpublisher and editor of the enironmentalistrnpaper High Country News in Paonia,rnColorado, recentlv assured an audiencernat the University of Wyoming thatrnthe subdiision of the West in the I990’srnis a far greater threat than the mining ofrnit during the I970’s and 80’s was.rnThough the idea appeals to Deep Ecologists,rngiving the Rocky Mountains backrnto the Indians is unfeasible. Perhapsrnleaving it in the hands of the Westernersrnwho succeeded them is. too. But “environmentalism”rnas Washington understandsrnit today is only “progress” in anotherrnguise, whose intention is to convertrnan entire region into a playground forrnthe wealthv and an object of consumeristrngreed for the nation at large. Real environmentalistsrnwill stick with 29,000rnleaseholders am dav. crn.SO/CHRONICLESrnrnrn